Hidden Gem:
Joni Mitchell
Hejira
1976 | Asylum

Over the forty-odd years of her career, Joni Mitchell’s unapologetically glorious talent has inspired both fellow folksingers and jazz musicians alike, including Bob Dylan, Graham Nash, Brian Blade, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock. Hejira, one of her most lush and painterly albums, explains why.

Mitchell delicately blends, as is her trademark, wistful vignettes from her life with inventive compositions. Each song, the product of such reminiscence and adventurousness, is like a seed – equally a memento and a promise. Her lyrics particularly investigate a decidedly feminist theme: her predilections for traveling and independence, and their corresponding divergence from traditional roles for women. In “Song For Sharon,” she sings “Sharon you’ve got a husband and a family and a farm.” Mitchell, instead, has “the apple of temptation…” While Sharon sings for her “friends and her family,” Mitchell keeps her eyes “on the land and the sky” and will continue journeying. Close ones also urge her to “have children,” and find a charity to “help the needy,” but all she wants “right now is find another lover.” In the track “Amelia,” the strings of Mitchell’s guitar are the “hexagram of the heavens,” the same unwieldy heavens through which Amelia Earhart bravely flies. Even though people will direct Amelia (and Mitchell) where to go, “until” she “gets there,” she’ll “never really know.”
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