Vote here for your favourite lyric on Joni Mitchell's album "Blue"

"All I really, really want our love to do / is to bring out the best in me and in you too"

Fuck

Oh god this will be impossible and there's probably a bunch of good choices that aren't on the list.

"Map of Canada" is really good. "You're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed" is heartbreaking and perfect.

Agree with those who have said her willingness to be just fuckin goofy is part of the charm of this record.

But I also agree that there are some clunkers. Maybe the clunkers are themselves clunkily charming? Note that she doesn't really sing percolator, it's more like perculator. And "he cooked good om-A-LETTES" is pretty forced. "Folks I dig" is dippy. "MERmaid CAfé" has the stresses wrong. "Arms/charms" is the second worst rhyme ever (after love/above).

But I can't imagine hearing the whole record and not considering it a monumental human achievement, up there with Renaissance masterpieces and Jane Austen and Mozart n shit.

Had to go with "strung out on another man" for the way she sings it. That said, "You're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed" is HoF, as is "I’m selfish and I’m sad."

Woulda liked to see "rent me a grand piano" or "toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down" too, but I don't know whether I would have voted differently had the choices been different. I could drink a case of this album

"Richard got married to a figure skater / and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator"

This is the one for me, picked it before even seeing the list. But it's missing the most devastating part:

And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright

Honestly I think no image struck more terror into my 20-something heart about married adulthood than drinking at home most nights with the tv on and all the house lights left up bright

and I'm embarrassed that I never noticed this until today, but "house lights" has a double meaning, as in theater house lights.

River > A Case Of You > Richard is pretty much the most devastating trifecta ending. Three phases of a relationship ending-- the immediate sadness of the breakup, a nostalgic remembering, a moment of transformative loss when one realizes their lover has moved on without them.

Except that drinking at home and watching television can actually be quite pleasant.

But it's the "all the house lights left up bright" part that makes it awful -- he is so deep into given up on life that he doesn't even turn the lights down and let himself escape into the tv magic.

It’s also the idea, I think that there is no magic or mystery left to his life, everything that is there can be seen immediately.

And of course in classic Joni style she flips it with the next line “I’m gonna blow this damn candle out”: Joni, in her dark cafe, has enough mystery to make her sick, namely: when will I find someone who understands me? Will I ever find live and happiness?

Otm, like he’s become too jaded to even allow any romance or fantasy into his life, while she has let it overwhelm her to the point that she is a victim of it.

I bang on about it a bit too much upthread but I think that juxtaposition is why this song feels like a really big moment in her oeuvre - no going back from here.

It's interesting to juxtapose it with Boho Dance (another one of my favorites) where she lyrically emerges from a dark "cellar in the Boho Zone"

her character in Richard assures herself that it's "only a phase these dark cafe days" which of course is played with tragic irony (it seems to be too late for her), yet for the character in the Boho Dance it really was only a phase and there's this odd combination of cynicism and hopefulness to the emergence, like a synthesis of Richard and the speaker in Richard who finds some redemption in honesty.

Yeah “Boho Dance” and “Song for Sharon” really build on what she does here.

boring answer but the refrain of a case of you

"if you want me i'll be at bar"

it's too old and cold and settled in its ways here / oh but california

The lyric that inspired me to make this poll was "will you take me as I am? Strung out on another man?" WHAT A LINE. Any time Joni infuses a lyric with a sly and sad acknowledgement that she's a problem girl, I just die.

<3 <3

A line I omitted is "he loved me so naughty / it made me weak in the knees". Why? It's a great line but I can't describe it, I feel like putting the sexy lines in a poll is a bad idea.

― fgti (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, September 28, 2019 12:57 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

no it is a good idea i love her sexy lines

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Damn nice spread

Jesus fucking christ, this might actually be the best record ever

Like, really? You had an argument with your lover and he said "I am as constant as the Northern Star"? And you said, "constantly in darkness?" You're having a fight about similes? This is the worst fucking fight I've ever heard.

Her lover at this time was apparently Leonard Cohen, so not entirely out of character.