A$# 015 Joni Mitchell | Blue

With her previous album, Ladies Of The Canyon, from 1970, Joni Mitchell had created a well-received folk songs, including her big hits Big Yellow Taxi and The Circle Game, plus the anthemic Woodstock. Her 1971 follow-up album, Blue, would prove to be even more influential.

Jason Ankeny, writing at allmusic.com, says that "the commercial and critical approval awarded her landmark 1971 record Blue was unprecedented: a luminous, starkly confessional set written primarily during a European vacation, the album firmly established Mitchell as one of pop music's most remarkable and insightful talents."

She certainly made her mark on the template of a confessional singer/songwriter album. These songs tell stories of sadness, love, longing, self-conflict - sketches of real life, poetically.

Here's just one sample, from A Case Of You:

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

The best known songs are probably A Case Of You and Carey. The rest are just as powerful. No filler here. All I Want and California are quite notable too.

For me the downside is that there seems to be a homogeneity in arrangements. But the lyrics more than compensate for that.

Track listing:
1. All I Want
2. My Old Man
3. Little Green
4. Carey
5. Blue
6. California
7. This Flight Tonight
8. River
9. A Case of You
10. The Last Time I Saw Richard