Top 100 Quotes About Joni Mitchell
#1. It's [Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You"] been one of my favorite songs for my entire life.
Jane Monheit
#2. I was really lost for a while in my teens. I was angry. But when I found music - Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell - it was a new discovery. It was a door to this other world where I wanted to be.
Ray Lamontagne
#3. When you love a song so much you have to sing, you know how you feel - it releases something in you that resonates as true, whether it's James Brown or Joni Mitchell.
Bonnie Raitt
#5. I did a song, "Court and Spark," for a Joni Mitchell tribute album that's yet to see the light of day. So she's someone I'd like to do something with, sure. I worked with the great guitar player Bill Frisell on Phantom Moon - that was fun. I'm such a fan; he's amazing.
Duncan Sheik
#6. One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.
Bonnie Raitt
#7. On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
Jon Landau
#8. Joni Mitchell had it right: "They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot." But perhaps, in the near future, we could add a line of hopeful epilogue to that song: then they tore down the parking lot / and raised up a paradise
Richard Louv
#9. People have these incredible expectations. So instead of being inspired by, say, Joni Mitchell's music, I look at it and say to myself, 'I'm going to quit - why would I think of writing or performing after listening to that?'
Idina Menzel
#10. I've always associated consciousness with artists like Bob Marley or Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan. You know, artists that really talked about what was going on in the world and really artists that are timeless.
Will Ferrell
#11. I would make tea for Joni Mitchell or clean her car, anything to be in the studio and watch her work.
Sheena Easton
#12. Adele's voice is incredible. Chet Baker also has one of my favorite voices of all time, and so does Joni Mitchell. And Frank Black. Oh, and Stevie Nicks.
Megan Boone
#13. One of the greatest experiences I ever had was listening to a conversation with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. Just to hear them talking, my mouth was open. They understand each other perfectly, and they make these leaps and jumps because they don't have to explain anything.
Herbie Hancock
#14. We've been waiting for a format like triple-A where you can hear Crowded House, Joni Mitchell and R.E.M.
Vonda Shepard
#15. As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
Alanis Morissette
#16. Definitely I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell, and I think she is a wonderful writer, so she is probably part of me.
Jane Siberry
#17. My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#18. When the suggestion was made that I might consider doing music of Joni Mitchell, I thought it was a fantastic idea. Joni, I admire not only for her music but for her person, because she's a person that really stands out for what she believes in.
Herbie Hancock
#19. I listen to a lot of old music, like Joni Mitchell and David Bowie.
Sophie McShera
#20. There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.
Shawn Colvin
#21. I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell's version of "A Case of You." My mom was a huge Joni Mitchell fan.
Cheyenne Jackson
#22. I love Radiohead, which most people don't expect, and I listen to everything from Stevie Wonder to Steely Dan, Carole King, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, Beyonce Knowles, Vampire Weekend, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Burt Bacharach, and Paul Simon.
Eliza Doolittle
#23. I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.
Jewel
#24. Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.
Ben Folds
#25. I've always loved aggressive, hard, noisy, yet melodic bands, and at the same time I've always loved 'Blue' by Joni Mitchell.
Art Alexakis
#26. I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music.
Melora Hardin
#27. Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction - always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it's done.
Jon Landau
#28. I grew up in the '70s, and I hear in my own stuff a lot of what I grew up listening to, which is to say I hear a lot of Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder.
Jason Robert Brown
#29. My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
Yael Naim
#30. I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with.
Laura Marling
#31. I've been watching a lot of Joni Mitchell YouTube clips and I can't believe her transformation from this folk singer in Canada.
Zooey Deschanel
#32. Leonard Bernstein was probably the most significant formative influence on me - he was such an encompassing musician. I spent my teenage years absorbing him, and my other interests stemmed off of that. Bernstein led me to Sondheim and to Gershwin, and Sondheim led me to listening to Joni Mitchell.
Jason Robert Brown
#33. It's like there's the rest of the world, and then there's America. Part of the reason I would really love continue to making music over here because so much of American music has inspired me, whether it's Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.
Tom Odell
#34. I don't know any guitar player, any of the real greats, who don't rate Joni Mitchell up there with the best of them.
Chrissie Hynde
#35. I was inspired by people like Joni Mitchell and Carole King and Stevie and "Storytellers." People that could really change the world with their lyric, no matter who sung the song, they had still been the source of that message. So that's what I really aim for.
Emeli Sande
#36. The writers that I aspire to, like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, they'll tell you that the work gets harder, not easier. And they set that bar for us where we're always striving to do something better than the last time, whether it's the next song or just the next line.
Christopher Cross
#37. I did want to be Joni Mitchell for quite a long time.
Val McDermid
#39. My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too.
Greta Salpeter
#40. I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell in high school. She was sort of an inspiration to me. I think she's a great lyricist, and she makes interesting choices.
Zooey Deschanel
#41. You wouldn't find a Joni Mitchell on 'X Factor;' that's not the place. 'X Factor' is a specific thing for people that want to go through that process - it's a factory, you know, and it's owned and stitched-up by puppet masters.
Annie Lennox
#42. I was raised in Topanga Canyon. It's an eclectic community up in the Santa Monica mountains. A lot of musicians lived there - Joni Mitchell, Neil Young - as well as artists and craftspeople.
Inara George
#43. A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell.
Meghan Daum
#44. And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.
Glen Hansard
#45. Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.
Neil Diamond
#46. I was totally romanticizing the idea of Los Angeles when the Doors, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young were hanging out there.
Lykke Li
#47. My parents are music fans, even though neither of them play an instrument. I was exposed to their record collection, so I love everything from Joni Mitchell to Bruce Springsteen.
Gabrielle Aplin
#48. I'm an old-school, embarrassing Joni Mitchell fan. Her music made a hook in my soul and hasn't let go for all these years. I even sing her songs as lullabies to my kids.
Edie Falco
#49. I am multiracial, and I went through different phases - at one point, I listened to Wu-Tang and hip-hop, and then the next year I listened to Joni Mitchell.
Tessa Thompson
#50. We love our lovin' ... but not like we love our freedom.
Joni Mitchell
#51. White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.
Joni Mitchell
#52. I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear
Joni Mitchell
#53. When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.
Joni Mitchell
#54. I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.
Joni Mitchell
#55. Do you want - do you want - do you want to dance with me baby?
Joni Mitchell
#56. I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.
Joni Mitchell
#57. Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best
work came out of it.
Joni Mitchell
#58. Acid, booze, and ass, needles, guns, and grass, lots of laughs.
Joni Mitchell
#59. Well something's lost but something's gained in living every day.
Joni Mitchell
#60. What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
Joni Mitchell
#61. I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.
Joni Mitchell
#62. When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished ... that's kind of disappointing.
Joni Mitchell
#64. Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!
Joni Mitchell
#65. And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.
Joni Mitchell
#66. Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles.
Joni Mitchell
#67. If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.
Joni Mitchell
#68. The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up.
Joni Mitchell
#69. I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe.
Joni Mitchell
#70. Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral.
Joni Mitchell
#71. Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.
Joni Mitchell
#72. Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at.
Joni Mitchell
#73. Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
Joni Mitchell
#74. Fear is like the wilderland - Stepping stones or sinking sand
Joni Mitchell
#75. I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?
Joni Mitchell
#77. My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.
Joni Mitchell
#78. But you know it's hard to tell
When you're in the spell if it's wrong or if it's real
But you're bound to lose
If you let the blues get you scared to feel
Joni Mitchell
#79. Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.
Joni Mitchell
#80. I'm not a kiss-and-teller. I never named names.
Joni Mitchell
#81. I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.
Joni Mitchell
#83. I didn't think I had much of a following in the south. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the south. I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable, and I just hit a wig store.
Joni Mitchell
#84. I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.
Joni Mitchell
#85. My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.
Joni Mitchell
#87. I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.
Joni Mitchell
#88. Richard got married to a figure skater, and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator.
Joni Mitchell
#89. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles.
Joni Mitchell
#90. An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion.
Joni Mitchell
#91. You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won't even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out.
Joni Mitchell
#92. I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.
Joni Mitchell
#93. You know that it never has been easy
Whether you do or do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities
Or stick to some straighter line.
Joni Mitchell
#94. Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.
Joni Mitchell
#95. I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out.
Joni Mitchell
#96. I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me.
Joni Mitchell
#97. Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load.
Joni Mitchell
#98. Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.
Joni Mitchell
#99. When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary.
Joni Mitchell
#100. Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.
Joni Mitchell
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