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Why Joni Mitchell sounded different from the start

Polio in childhood weakened her left hand, leaving her to devise alternative tuning, surprising phrasing and ‘chords of inquiry’ that hang like question marks in the air

27 July 2024

9:00 AM

27 July 2024

9:00 AM

Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell Ann Powers

HarperCollins, pp.480, 25

What makes Joni Mitchell’s music special? The lyrics alone put her on 20th-century music’s Mount Rushmore, alongside her cultural mirror Bob Dylan and her brief lover Leonard Cohen. But for me it’s her phrasing, her tunings and her sense of time. Decades on, her music remains endlessly surprising. Think a line is going in a certain direction? Think again, as Mitchell bends it away; or shifts key; or arcs her voice into its celestial sphere, only to suddenly plummet, like a plane in turbulence.

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