This Canadian female singer/songwriter has a few very emotional songs.
- "The Magdalene Laundries" is based on the real-life indignities suffered by inmates of the Magdalene Asylums in Ireland.
- "Big Yellow Taxi" (also covered by Counting Crows and Amy Grant).
- "Both Sides Now" is another one.I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions that I recall.
I really don't know love at all.- It's even more hard-hitting when you contrast the more poppy, folky version
from the seventies to the noughties version made famous in Love Actually. The aching and more sensual maturity in Mitchell's vocals, coupled with the superb orchestral arrangement, adds a poignancy to the latter that wasn't present in the former. The original is wistful; the more modern version is heartbreaking. - And to complete the trifecta, there's the version from her surprise 2022 Newport Folk Festival appearance, her first full show in over 20 years and still recovering from her 2015 aneurysm. Even the band members are openly sobbing by the end of the song.
- It's even more hard-hitting when you contrast the more poppy, folky version
- "Little Green" (from Blue (Joni Mitchell Album)) is about the child Joni had and gave up for adoption. They were reunited later on, but something about Joni's voice and the fact that she obviously thought she'd never see the child again is just heart-wrenching.
- And "River", holy crap. Strangely enough, a lot of artists cover it on Christmas albums.
- Also: "The Circle Game", "Down To You", "The Last Time I Saw Richard", and "The Silky Veils of Ardour".
- "The Circle Game" somewhat really hits it when she gets to the lines.So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true - Which practically narrates that Surprisingly Realistic Outcome follows and whatever childish wishes he had were simply abandoned and forgotten as he grew older. Only to be saved by the hope spot that 'there'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty'. Ask Neil Young: it's about him.
- "The Circle Game" somewhat really hits it when she gets to the lines.
- "Cherokee Louise", about a childhood friend who was sexually abused.
- The verse in "Song for Sharon" about the woman from Joni's hometown who was Driven to Suicide. To drive the point home, Joni's background vocalizations sound like crying.
