Blue

The quintessential singer-songwriter album, its essence just Joni on acoustic guitar or piano, alone with her intimate, confessional songs. Oh, those songs!- River; A Case of You; Carey; This Flight Tonight; All I Want ; the title track, and 4 more.Joni Mitchell would go on from this ’71 recording to make more popular, more ambitious, and more challenging albums, but she’s never made a better one. Working with minimal accompaniment (Stephen Stills and James Taylor are two of the four sidemen), the Canadian thrush summoned an involving song cycle of romance found and lost. Though Blue is an uncommonly intimate representation, it’s also astonishingly open and gracious. Songs such as “All I Want,” “Carey,” “California,” and “A Case of You” work equally well as poetry and pop music. –Steve Stolder

• MITCHELL JONI
• R&P INTERNATIONAL
• INTERNATIONAL
• MUSIC