Brandi Carlile has played a significant role in helping legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell make her return to the stage following a near-fatal brain haemorrhage. And in a new interview, Carlile discusses how her own music has been influenced by some of Mitchell’s greatest work from the ’70s.
Speaking to MOJO magazine, Carlile says that Mitchell’s 1971 album Blue had a profound effect on her as a young artist, and singles out the track Little Green as particularly important.
“I heard Little Green and I understood the power of vulnerability, and how femininity didn’t mean submissiveness,” Carlile says. “It was the toughest and grittiest song I’ve heard in my life, and it reduced me to tears in ways that I still don’t fully understand.”
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She says of the Blue album: “Joni hates the word ‘confessional’ as she thinks it implies you’ve done something wrong, but for me it’s the first folk album that’s entirely a person turning themselves inside out, and it changed songwriting forever.”
Carlile also praises another song from Blue, famously recorded by Prince.
She tells MOJO: “A Case Of You is one of the greatest songs of all time. It can be played in any configuration – piano, dulcimer, ukulele, a cappella.”
Blue was a hit in 1971, reaching No 3 in the UK, No 15 in the US and No 9 in Mitchell’s native Canada. Since then the album has regularly featured in critics’ choice lists. In 2000, Blue was placed at No 3 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time.
However, for all that Brandi Carlile says about Blue, there is another of Mitchell’s albums that she treasures even more.
That, she says, is the 1976 album Mitchell recorded with a stellar cast of musicians including Jaco Pastorius on bass and Larry Carlton on guitar.
“My favourite Joni album is Hejira,” Carlile says, “because it speaks to me at the time of my life I’m in right now.”
She names three outstanding songs from that album – the title track, Refuge Of The Roads and Amelia.
Contemporary reviews of Hejira were overwhelmingly positive, with renowned critic Nick Kent writing in the NME: “Her melodies are inevitably both utterly relaxing and stimulating, and the Pastorius/Carlton duo are just stunning in these spartan settings.”
The album has also been hailed as a masterpiece by various other musicians including Danielle Haim, Bjork and St. Vincent.
MOJO’s cover story on Joni Mitchell also includes analysis of her 50 greatest songs – featuring classics such as Woodstock, Chelsea Morning, The Circle Game, In France They Kiss On Main Street, California, River, Big Yellow Taxi and Both Sides, Now.
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