A powerful portrait of Joni Mitchell, blackface and all

Ann Powers delivers a weighty account of the singer’s career, even if she decided not to talk to Mitchell so as not to fall for her ‘supercharged appeal’

Lofty reputation: Joni Mitchell performing in 1995. Photo by David Redfern/Redferns

John Meagher

In 1989, when I was 14, REM released Green, their sixth album and their first on a major label. It turned my world on its axis. So smitten was I that I spent what little pocket money I had on every album that Michael Stipe and friends had released up to that point. From then until they played Slane in 1995, on their tour in support of the grunge-inspired Monster, no other band could shift REM from the centre of my obsessions. Now, though, almost 30 years later, a seemingly infinite number of artists have supplanted them in my listening habits.

I mention this because Ann Powers’ remarkable book on Joni Mitchell poses questions about why certain acts connect with us at various stages of our lives and why our relationship with them can go from infatuation to indifference and vice versa. I may not listen to REM very much any more, but I certainly listen a lot to Mitchell, someone who barely registered in my teen years.