Blue
(12/100 Greatest Albums Ever)

One of the hurdles faced by new female singer-songwriters is the inevitable comparison with Canadian singer-songstrel Joni Mitchell, with this landmark album seen as the primary testing ground. It followed on the success of her second opus Ladies Of The Canyon and the single ‘Big Yellow Taxi’. Mitchell was clearly expanding beyond her original folk-based stylings to create an album that contained such 24-carat nuggets as ‘My Old Man’, the oft-covered ‘Carey’, the exuberant ‘A Case Of You’ and the elegiac ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’. Indeed, many songs revealed her penchant for weaving multiple subjects into one song, with ‘All I Want’ juxtaposing a spirited yearning with the pessimistic view that such yearnings are mere dream substitutes for unfound love. ‘This Flight Tonight’ even survived an insensitive cover by Nazareth. Blue was an uncompromising work by an artist refusing to be penned in the folk stockade.