№ 37 of 100
Blue
Blue by Joni Mitchell (1971), № 37 in The Lead-In’s 100 greatest albums. Joni Mitchell figured out that a confession could be architecture. Every singer-songwriter who has tried since has been working in her blueprint.
Joni Mitchell at twenty-seven, after a year of personal upheaval, recorded ten songs with three musicians at A&M Studios. The most-direct singer-songwriter album of its era. Released June 22, 1971.
- Released
- June 22, 1971
- Label
- Reprise Records
- Producer(s)
- Joni Mitchell · Henry Lewy (engineer)
- Runtime
- 35:41 (10 tracks)
- Chart peak (US)
- #15 (Billboard 200)
- Chart peak (UK)
- #3 (Record Retailer)
- Certifications
- Platinum (RIAA); 3M+ units globally
- Awards & honours
- Library of Congress National Recording Registry (2017); ranked #3 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums (2020)
Mitchell's fourth album. Recorded at A&M Studios Hollywood over spring 1971 with minimal accompaniment. The album that defined confessional singer-songwriter form for the next fifty years.
Joni Mitchell had been a singer-songwriter for six years by 1971. She had released three albums (Song to a Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon) and had a relationship with Graham Nash. By spring 1971 she had spent several months traveling alone in Europe, including a brief but significant relationship with James Taylor.
Recording took place at A&M Studios in Hollywood with engineer Henry Lewy in spring 1971. Mitchell played dulcimer, piano, and acoustic guitar. Stephen Stills played bass and guitar on two tracks; James Taylor played acoustic guitar on three; Russ Kunkel played drums on two; otherwise Mitchell performed alone.
The album's signature feature is its emotional directness, songs about specific people Mitchell had loved or fought with, named or unmistakably identified. The level of confession was unusual for a major-label release in 1971; the album set the template for what 'confessional songwriting' would mean for the next fifty years.
The album's ten songs include 'All I Want,' 'My Old Man,' 'Little Green' (about Mitchell's daughter given up for adoption in 1965), 'Carey,' 'Blue,' 'California,' 'This Flight Tonight,' 'River,' 'A Case of You,' 'The Last Time I Saw Richard.'
Blue belongs at number thirty-seven because it is the album that defined confessional singer-songwriter form. Joni Mitchell's emotional directness has been the template for every subsequent female-singer-songwriter LP. The album's place in the canon has been continuously settled.
Pressing guide — the one to own
Original 1971 US pressing on Reprise, catalog MS 2038 (the 'MS' prefix denotes stereo; there is no mono), in a gatefold sleeve with a deep-blue inner sleeve matching the cover. The genuine first press carries the early tan 'riverboat/steamboat' Reprise label without the later Warner Communications credit in the rim text. Bernie Grundman mastered the album, with a 'BG' etched in the deadwax; the UK original is a separate issue (K 44128).
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