Jewel on Joni Mitchell

[Jessica]

RE song: “A Case of You”

I love this song, I’ve listened to it five bajillion times. Everything off that record, off of all of her albums, are just very, very beautiful. But I think Joni had a very unique style. I find a lot of the songwriters that are from the northern climates tend to have developed their own style and own sound through their own exploration, usually pretty literary. And so she was very poetic. Her melodic choices were very unique. And she painted a picture, but without it being generic. She was painting a picture that was very poetic, but somehow very universal, but somehow very personal. It’s a magical combination.

I love the [line], “Just before our love got lost/ you said I’m as constant as a northern star/ and I said, ‘Constantly in the darkness, where’s that at?/ If you want me I’ll be in the bar.’” She had a very self-possessed sexuality, I think. You didn’t hear women talk about sexuality much, and my experience of female sexuality in the musical world was really through pop music, right? It was Madonna and overt sexuality. And something I think that always struck me about Joni is she was very sexually self-possessed, but it wasn’t some kind of trumped-up or over-idealized thing. It was very vulnerable, what it meant to be a woman. How do you handle heartache? It had a sense of humour — just that one verse alone sums up so much of unrequited [love], of somebody leaving you in the dark.

That opening line’s solid; all of it. “On the back of a cartoon coaster/ in the blue TV screen light/ I drew a map of Canada/ oh, Canada/ with your face sketched on it twice.” It’s such a conversational way of eliciting a mood. I think Leonard Cohen was great at that, but their voices are obviously very, very different. When you can paint a picture of somebody doodling and create a mood of all the subtext, it’s very powerful. But she’s f—ked, right? Like she loves this man, you know, it’s like I’m in the dark; I’ll be at the bar [laughs]. This feels pretty gloomy. And then she’s like, “But dear God, you’re in my blood like holy wine. It’s bitter and sweet. And I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet.” Nobody was writing that…. Her way of saying it is not only very original, but it’s a real, complex portrait of vulnerability and hurt and perhaps ill-fated and that hopeless feeling of my God, but I could drink you up, you know?

I think Blue was the power — the same way “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and that album [The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan] was for [Bob] Dylan, there’s something about a good songwriter with minimal production. It’s very hard to be alone onstage, to be alone in a recording and hold somebody for 60 minutes, an hour and a half. Your songs have to be so good, your emotionality and your honesty have to be so on point, and it’s why very few people do it, and that’s why when people get it right, it usually changes tides. It usually changes pop culture because it’s powerful and it’s rare.

— Jewel, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter

https://www.cbc.ca/musicinteractives/features/joni-mitchell-blue-turns-50