A Powerful Voice in Music: Joni Mitchell

Who to Listen To Instead of Bob Dylan

Today’s column is dedicated to my dear friend, Julie Poteet Robertson, and our amazing daughters Ellie and Maggie.

If you are serious about changing your life and changing the world, quit listening to men and start listening to women. It’s really that simple.

I think most women are in agreement on this: our planet is off balance, and the cause of this is that too much power is held by men, specifically the types of men who put their priorities ahead of all others. Ladies, it’s time for us to take a hard look at where we’ve been complacent (or in some cases complicit) and consider where that has gotten us. When we relinquish our power to men, be it in our homes or the voting booth, we end up with a big fucking mess. My point: hold on tight to the power you have, so there’s less environmental remediation and social reconstruction down the road. And so you keep your sanity.

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Take a moment. Listen to what this woman has to say.

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The men currently in power do not represent the majority, nor are they looking out for women, children, the marginalized populations of the world, and the vulnerable. They are sacrificing forests, oceans, the air, and animals in pursuit of financial gain. Some are sacrificing entire populations. Their selfish decisions hurt everyone, and every thing. If women were in charge, and their perspective considered, our world would, no doubt, be infinitely different.

How do we, as women, go about navigating these difficult times, when our hard-earned rights are quickly evaporating at the hands of the GOP and the religious right, and we feel our power waning?

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I say we work to cancel out the bad with good times and good thoughts of our own making. Create equilibrium. That means taking a break from time to time from the important protesting and trolling of public officials you are doing. Give yourself the gift of enjoying some good music, good food, good company, a bit of dancing, and some great sex. Maintain a positive outlook by prioritizing your mental and physical well-being. Tenacity is key to our surviving the confusion and disorder we’re living through.

And this is precisely why we need to change our music listening habits. Find the voices and music that speak to your experiences as a woman and as someone who cares about the world and things outside of yourself. Look for songs that provide the inspiration and the solace you long for or that celebrate more joyful times.

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Joni Mitchell’s beautiful ballad, Little Green, is about a baby daughter she gave up for adoption in 1965.

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Has anyone else noticed that music streaming platforms, when compiling seemingly endless sets of music based on a listener’s purported tastes, tend to offer up almost entirely male artists? Over the last month, I started doing the math and found the results disheartening. Regardless of the tune I selected as a starting point or the artist (and I was specifically choosing women), the randomized songs to follow were almost exclusively by men or all-male groups. Disappointingly, the ratio of male to female artists on these sets was 15:1. To say this infuriated me would be an understatement.

Some would postulate this disparity is simply a reflection of the number of male vs. female artists out there, and an indication of which groups and soloists have been deemed worthwhile by the recording industry. When I thought of all the incredible female artists I know, and how infrequently their tunes came up in my sets, I decided to take a dive into this murky pond. What was really going on here?

My conclusion, after months of listening to music and researching female songwriters, singers, and group leaders, is that female artists have been passed over in favor of their male counterparts time and again. And there seems to be no reason for this other than the fact they don’t have penises. Clearly, though few seem willing to say this out loud, the music of female artists doesn’t speak to those in the upper echelons of the music industry — almost all of whom are white men. Raise your hand if this sounds plausible.

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Both Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan wrote songs titled “Tin Angel,” Mitchell’s rendition is from 1967, Dylan’s from 2012. Tin Angel was a popular café in Greenwich Village in the 60s and frequented by both. A side-by-side comparison of these recordings makes clear the stark differences in their aesthetic sensibilities, style, talent, lyrical and harmonic palette, and overall artistry. The differences speak for themselves.

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As a rule, female artists continue to be underrepresented, underpaid, and exploited across the entirety of the music industry. The women who managed to survive this grind and went on to be successful on their own terms had to, at some point, chew off their own leg to do so. That is the story of Taylor Swift, who lost control of the master recordings of her first six albums and was then denied the opportunity to buy them back. Rather than caving to an oppressive system that would forever bind her to one recording label, Swift decided to undertake the laborious task of re-recording all of her early songs. She chose to let go of the past, rather than face a future of being beholden to Scooter Braun’s company, Ithaca Holdings. Note: Braun has since sold Swift’s recordings to Shamrock Music, who in turn sold them back to Swift. This whole ordeal only bolstered Swift’s career and sent these already popular albums back up into the charts in their re-recorded versions. Ca-ching. In the end, Swift emerged victorious and set an example for everyone in the industry. This is how it’s done: be your own artist, create without limitations. Yes, Swift has bigger balls than any of the boys. Ha!

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Taylor Swift has long acknowledged Joni Mitchell’s influence on her songwriting, and it is thought that her album, “Red,” from 2012, was influenced by Mitchell’s groundbreaking album, “Blue,” from 1971. No mystery what the intriguing line from Swift’s song, “So overnight, you look like a '60s queen,” refers to. Led Zeppelin was known to have referred to Mitchell as "the queen," and the group honored her with the song "Going to California” in 1971. Mitchell was also referred to as the “Queen of El Lay" by Rolling Stone Magazine, and Dawna Hammers, during a tribute concert, referred to her as the "queen of all songwriters,” while Us Magazine described her as one of “the queens of rock & roll.” Enough said.

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Despite Swift’s bold moves and subsequent success, the gender gap continues in the music industry, and it is real, wide, and deep, significantly impacting careers. What the bullies say in defense of this disparity is that women in the field are not on a par with the men, plain and simple. I am calling their bullshit, and I hope you will start doing the same. Enjoy Elijah Johnson’s take on this issue, “Double Standards in the Music Industry” — a good, short read that revisits the problems that persist. If you’re curious as to the types of men the music industry spares no expense to promote, like Kanye West, you might take a deep dive into “Toxic Masculinity in Kanye West’s Music,” by Grace Ross, unless, of course, you have better things to do, like listening to good music. And be sure to quit listening to Kanye’s shit, if you haven’t already.

Ahhhhh, big exhale… I feel my indignation finally subsiding, and this could be because my hyperthyroidism is now in remission. Or it could be because I did a big think on the beauty of AI, and how very easy it has become to access music of all kinds. Each and every one of us now has the power to narrow down music searches based on genre, gender of artist, style, time period, political affliations, and whatnot. And anything and everything is out there in the way of recordings — it’s amazing. Discovering what you really want to hear comes down to doing a precise search. You can then curate your own songlists — fuck Pandora, or Apple Music, or YouTube.

Talk about a project I can wrap my head around… this is it: guiding women toward great music by female artists, with a few pieces thrown in that pay homage to great women. And for those wanting to screen out undesirable lyrics, and offensive political stances, or who simply don’t want exposure to narcissistic artists and their take on life, you can run potential music choices through Kenneth Quinnell’s superb and carefully researched decency filter: “The Big List of Problematic Artists and Songs.” Imagine how much better you’ll feel refraining from the garbage offered by the streaming music services, which are propped up by the music industry, which (you guessed it) is run by men. White ones.

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Homages to Joni Mitchell by the men who knew her well, who understood her worth as a woman and had a deep appreciation for her as an artist. Mitchell inspired these beautiful tunes, and her musicianship and lyrical prowess encouraged songwriting that went beyond personal declarations of love… both from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin. As Plant says: "When you're in love with Joni Mitchell, you've got to write about it every now and again.”

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I did wonder what I’d gotten myself into — how would I take on something of this magnitude? We’re talking a a vast amount of repertoire and hundreds (or was it thousands?) of female artists. Where to begin? How would I draw people in and choose what to put out there? More importantly, what did women want to hear?

Around 2:00 a.m., last Tuesday, it came to me, in part because of a conversation I had with a neighbor who is a Bob Dylan devotee. As he was waxing rhapsodic on Dylan, I found myself getting more and more agitated. I’d just spent the last couple of weeks poring over Joni Mitchell’s work. In my mind, there was no comparison between these two contemporaries. The more I listened to Mitchell, the more irritating I found Dylan — his voice grating and off-key, and on most live recordings, his guitar horribly out of tune. In my mind, Dylan’s lyrics were claptrap masquerading as great poetry, his ideas simplistic and pandering to whatever the social indignation du jour. And in a number of the tunes, the lyrics come off as grossly misogynistic (see Just Like A Woman) — something devotees work feverishly to explain away, but which Dylan himself never addresses and which begs the question: “Was Dylan’s hostility toward women real?” If so, I was not interested in listening to the man.

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Dylan’s misogynistic streak, which as it turns out is real, and which I’m going to label “hostile sexism” (as described in this great article in The Atlantic) — it’s on full display in his 2022 book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. A great rundown on the contents of this self-important bible (ridiculously priced at $45) can be found in Jody Rosen’s review from the Los Angeles Times, titled: “Bob Dylan’s new book is revealing, misogynistic and a special kind of bonkers.” This quote from Rosen’s article summed up all I needed to know before deciding not to pull out my credit card: “You have to plow through 46 chapters before encountering a song by a female artist. (Cher’s ‘Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves’) There are only four songs by women in the book. That’s Dylan’s prerogative, of course; he’s writing about his record collection, not mine or yours. Yet women loom large in his consciousness and are omnipresent in his pages — appearing in such monstrous form, evoked in language so marinated in misogyny, that, reading ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song,’ I began to feel like a therapist, sneaking glances at my watch while the crackpot on the couch blurts one creepy fantasy after another.” Yikes. Ladies, do you really want to bathe in this sewage? I repeat: do not buy the book.

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And one more bit, I feel the need to express — the absurdity of Dylan’s winning a Nobel Prize. Give. Me. A. Break. His winning the prize tells us two things: the committee is too lazy to explore artists beyond the most commercially obvious (i.e. Dylan) and, as usual, is demonstrating their longstanding bias toward men in both the nomination and selection processes. Noah Berlatsky, perfectly sums up my thoughts on the subject in his article, “Bob Dylan Isn’t Even America’s Greatest Literary Songwriter: This Nobel Prize Was Boringly Predictable.” Great read.

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Add to this the fact that Dylan has little musical training, as evidenced by his mastery of only the simplest of chord progressions and the most basic, repetitive song structures. And his melodic lines… one could move from one tune to the next and find almost no variation, the same droning on and on from piece to piece, with simplistic, flat melodic lines, like Gregorian chant, except not as interesting. Ditto for the three main keys in which he composes and sings — F, C, and G. Little consideration is given to choosing a key because of its color and how it delivers the message. Dylan fails to move beyond his favorite three shades of gray, which, not surprisingly, happen to be the easiest keys to master. Expressive stagnation, in a nutshell. Lazy.

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Richly colorful, jazz-influenced harmonies. Dreamy soundscapes worthy of enjoying with some fine cognac. Lyrics for Mitchell’s rendition of “Twisted” were written by Annie Ross and set to a melody by Wardell Gray.

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As a musician, I find listening to Dylan’s work hugely challenging — I have to look beyond all I know about vocal quality, pitch, expression and phrasing, chord structures, ensemble, etc. My musician brain wants so badly to correct his slovenly approach to his craft, the disorder of which is a huge distraction and takes away from any enjoyment I might derive. His singing style does not come across to me as a distinctive patina, as his many fans would describe. Why? Because Dylan did not live the life he portrays in his songs. As Joni Mitchell pointed out long ago, Dylan is inauthentic. He is wearing someone else’s clothes. He is singing, metaphorically, someone else’s song. All of this is beyond annoying.

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Easy listening. A cascade of beautiful poetry.

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So, back to my neighborly conversation in the driveway. I asked my friend, “Do you like any of Dylan’s female contemporaries?” And my pal suggested that Joan Baez seemed pretty good, what did I think? Hmm, Joan Baez — a folk singer known primarily for her interpretations of other people’s work. Rather than getting too snooty, I politely suggested, “How about Joni Mitchell?” to which he replied, “I don’t know her well, but I don’t like what I’ve heard.” Then he scrunched up his nose as if a skunk had just sauntered by. Alrighty then. Dylan = a god. Baez = as good as women get. Mitchell = don’t like her? No reason given by the way, but I’m going to guess Mitchell just wasn’t his sort of a woman, if you catch my drift. Which, by the way, is why you should listen to her!

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Take a trip back in time. 1969.

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My feeling: fuck all. This week I started asking every woman I knew whether they liked Mitchell. “Oh, yeah, she’s the best!” was the general consensus. With the men I surveyed came guarded responses, you know, the kind where they’re not going to lay it on the line for fear of offending you. My man, however, was totally honest and forthright: he admitted he knew nothing about Mitchell prior to my starting in on this project, but now considers her one of the best artists of his generation. Progress? Yes.

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So, here’s how I’ve decided to approach the upcoming chapters of this project: each month, I intend to feature female artists who represent a particular genre of music, identifying the women who are on par with those men typically assumed to be at the top of the heap (or streaming algorithm, as the case may be). The article of the month might be titled something like “What to Listen to Instead of Frank Sinatra… or The Rolling Stones. Or John Lennon or Lenny Kravitz. Or Eric Clapton, John Fogerty, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, Phil Collins, David Byrne, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Al Greene, Justin Timberlake, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, Drake, etc.

Send me your ideas, please, and together let’s get acquainted with the voices that represent women properly — those that speak to our unique experiences and viewpoints, how we think, what is important to us, our talents, and our artistry. I think you’re going to find this eye-opening, and that, like me, you’ll feel vindicated in an "Ah, yes, women were always amazing,” sort of way.

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This week’s choice of title was easy: “Who to Listen to Instead of Bob Dylan.” Hope my point was well taken.

Hey! It’s time to shove all that male energy and angst to the side and make way for some music that speaks entirely to you, beautiful women, without men weighing in, as they are wont to do.

Stay sane. Stay strong. Get ready for what’s to come.

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The queen. There is no one better.

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Explore the life of Joni Mitchell:

Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, by David Yaffe.

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, by Ann Powers

Joni Mitchell’s Official Website

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All of Joni Mitchell’s music can be found here.

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