TS: Joni Mitchell v. Carole King

That said, Carole King is a worthy contender. Some of those Goffin/King numbers are fantastic.

But how does one gauge honesty? "It's Too Late" seems every bit as wrenching as "A Case of You," in no small part because King's warm, amateurish vocals project honesty.

Joni does of course easily win this.

Well, that's why I put it between stars. You can't of course.

that's interesting, right?

King was/is a first-rate professional pop songwriter of the pre-auteur era in popular music. When the tides shifted, she made one great, popular record in the new singer-songwriter style, that not only proved she could do it but proved she could do it well. But she had no real interest in exploring that genre, and her subsequent work was mainly more quality pop-for-hire and musical theater, etc.

Joni Mitchell, after Bob Dylan, is probably the person most responsible for creating the persona of the singer-songwriter, pop-troubador-as-artist convention that pretty much dominates the world, or half of it, now. To some extent, Mitchell may be more influential than Dylan, since it was Mitchell who really made personal, psycho-sexual confession the norm in songwriting, and Dylan did very little of that. Mitchell also pushed the envelope on incorporating non-pop musical styles and structures for her pop songs.

There are a bunch of great King-Goffin pop songs, and Tapestry is pleasant, well-written, and well performed. But none of that is as interesting or affecting to me as ANY of the great Joni Mitchell albums, starting with Ladies of the Canyon and running through (at least) Hejira. What's more, I don't think any single song of King's stands up to the best of Mitchell's early work -- Both Sides Now, Urge For Going, Chelsea Morning -- where she was working more or less the same turf as King in Tapestry. And I can't credit King's tiny output over the past 20 years against Mitchell's more-or-less honorable failures in that period.

So for me, it is Mitchell by a mile or more. By about the same distance as between Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond.

Only in a forum that prides itself on its anti- or post-rockism can the question even be taken seriously. I am fine with anti- or post-rockism, but one still ought to acknowledge the power and beauty of the artists that gave rise to nostalgic rockism (and who, themselves, were never anything like "rockists", except in hindsight). I can get annoyed at the dominance and conventions of English Romantic poetry, but that still doesn't mean that Southey was a better poet than Wordsworth or Keats.

It's hard to know if it's any good or not yet, I fell fast asleep somewhere around track 7-8.

JONI.

Cherokee Louise? The Magdalene Laundries? Edith And The Kingpin?

Joni is less of a pop writer, I'll happily give Carole King that, but that's a ridiculous claim!

There's a reason why Carole King had hits and Joni didn't: she wrote more linear melodies. "Edith & The Kingpin" is as satisfying in its own way as "So Far Away" or "I Feel The Earth Move," but it's not immediate, and I'll take immediacy over subtlety when I need emotional rescue.

There's a reason why Carole King had hits and Joni didn't: she wrote more linear melodies. "Edith & The Kingpin" is as satisfying in its own way as "So Far Away" or "I Feel The Earth Move," but it's not immediate, and I'll take immediacy over subtlety when I need emotional rescue.

-- Alfred Soto

Other people had hits with Joni's material though!

As for immediacy vs. subtlety... Joni is just 1000% worth the 'effort'. Agreeing about the non-linear melodies, disagreeing about the lesser value.

I listen to more Joni ALBUMS than one King song, but, oh, that one King song!

I think Prince called "Hissing..." something like the last good album he'd heard (for about 20 years).

Alfred are you thinking of the Tapestry version or The Shirelles?

Because Shirelles >>>>>>>>>>>> Carole for me.

And, yes, Prince did love Joni. Around The World in a Day is his hermetic Joni album.

Quite the opposite: the public was taken with her homespun image. Here's Christgau's 1970 review:

Pacific rock, sure, but with a sharpness worthy of a Brooklyn girl--if there's a truer song about breaking up than "It's Too Late," the world (or at least AM radio) isn't ready for it. Not that lyrics are the point on an album whose title cut compares life to a you-know-what--the point is a woman singing. King has done for the female voice what countless singer-composers achieved years ago for the male: liberated it from technical decorum. She insists on being heard as she is--not raunchy and hot-to-trot or sweet and be-yoo-ti-ful, just human, with all the cracks and imperfections that implies. And for the first time she has found the music--not just the melodies, but the studio support--to put her point across as cleanly and subtly as it deserves.

Advantage: Joni Mitchell!

Alfred admit that you were high when you wrote this

I mean, I love the shit outta WYLMT, perfect song no question about it, but Joni Mitchell is a fuckin' emotional ninja - that first track on Hejira for example smokes WYLMT on its own turf, it's just a little oblique about it

If not, I'll choose Carole.

I think there's a different type of emotional manipulation (of the listener) at work in all three (Laura and Carole closer to eachother than either is to Joni, I think). Very little of Joni's stuff is directly sonically affecting in the way that "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" is (parts of Blue and a few of the soppy jazz flourishes in Hissing aside) - and certainly Laura is just on another planet when it comes to this sort of stuff.

With Joni it's very much about getting inside the persona of the songs, such that the more understated emotional-sonic effects Joni deploys generate more intensity than they otherwise would because you get a very specific sense of the meaning they're attached to. (e.g. in "Coyote" when she sings "now he's got a woman at home/he's got another woman down the hall/and he seems to want me anyway" - the self-deprecating surprise inflecting her voice in that last line just goes over your head a bit if you're not paying attention to the words she's singing, the story she's constructing).

(in other words, Joni "works" in a way that is much more "rockist")

joni mitchell is, i think, a far more effective performer than carole king. i find that i love carole king songs more as, i dunno, some assumed part of the pop-culture ether, standards which everyone knows and which sound best when they come on in the pub on a sunday afternoon - but i hardly ever listen to tapestry. whereas joni's performances are too distractingly intimate to be commonly held standards in the same way.

(just heard Bryan Ferry's cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" – WOW).

hence, Carole King is better...

literally can't