Equipped as I am with the appropriate chromosome configuration, I can safely say I adore La Mitch.

But you're right, she is chronically underrated, although the "comeback" album hasn't done her reputation any favours.

I know many male Joni fans, one or two of whom reckon she is by far the greatest singer songwriter bar non.

as one of the most talented musicians of the past 40 years. That's enough, surely?

I'm a boy and I like Joni very much

Never seen anything but appropriate amounts of love and respect in all the time I've been here. (1 year 22 weeks apparently)

"I'm drinking sweet champagne
got my headphones up high
Can't numb you
can't drum you out of my mind
they're singing ""Goodbye baby, baby bye bye,
Oooh love is blind""".
See what she did there?

Sorry Sheev but your initial proposition is preposterous. Joni is hugely, widely, critically admired and adored, and most of the journalists who've praised her have been men. I am a man and I think she's the greatest songwriter of the rock era, a consummate artist. And I know loads of other blokes who share my view. I don't think the marginalization you allude to exists.

I love Joni Mitchell and hold her in higher regard than Dylan or the vastly overrated Lennon who always struck me as a monotone, pretentious bore.

She's a genius. If she'd only made Blue I'd still love her but her range and willingness to experiment make her unique. I've not always like her stuff but I've always felt like I was being treated as an adult by her material. Its subtlety and intelligence is rare and worth savoring and you, sir, are wrong.

we can't stand.....

...I love Joni, and hold her in the same uncritical awe that others regard Dylan. I even love her when she's duetting with Billy Idol or in her last preposterously self-important CD, Shine.

I've never felt that David Hepworth likes her very much, though, from what he's written...

She writes good songs but I just can't stand her voice.

..she stands just between Dylan and RT.

Skimmed through looking for any possible bias in our beloved magazine's May issue: first five artists mentioned are U2, Morrissey, Roger McGuinn, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, then lo - a woman appears, and her name is Melanie. Overall in the features there are 20 artists who are main focus of an article, and 8 are women. Of the contributors of articles and reviews - 22 men, 5 women.

(For comparison - the May issue of an unnamed rival of the mighty Word: starts off well with Janis Joplin, Grace Slick and Marianne Faithfull before Doves. Overall 3 of the 14 artists who were main focus of articles were female. Contributors - 35 men, 3 female.)

..on the bloody cover.

Have to agree with your Little Green synopsis, though.

Never knew a song that drives me to tears as much as this, in a good way a' course

... nor under-male-appreciated.

Her and Springsteen are the two Word deities which I just don't "get." Never have done. Her performance of Coyote on The Last Waltz causes fits of fury in the sprocket household. That fake laugh at the end of Big Yellow Taxi has been the source of much rage and her (early on) squeaky voice is like a drill in my ears. Has she ever knowingly cracked a joke as well? The sheer po-facedness of what I've heard by her (which admittedly ends around Blue) drives me nuts.

I've always thought Laura Nyro was miles better...

For similar reasons to gangle I couldn't stand her up and up the scale wail from the 70s until, well, actually, just about a couple of years ago. I knew she could write a good song: I have zillions of other artists covering her repertoire and like the songs. Then I decided to bite the bullet, probably mainly thru' a £4 compilation. And it was (largely) good, if occasionally annoying. And that is where I place her now. Alongside other worthies like Paul Simon, Kris Kristofferson and fellow canuck Gordon Lightfoot: all curates eggs with the capacity to give good omelette, if mainly thru' other ingredients. (Have I mixed my metaphor too far here? I mean that I can take a wee bit, but prefer others to do the beating.)
In praise of other mature women songwriters I'd prefer Lucinda, thankyou. And as a lasting icon, I'll take Emmylou.

My (ahem) thesis is that it is thin at one end, big in the middle and thin at the other end.

My other thesis is that is Joni and possibly only Joni as a woman - who's face could be carved on Mount Rushmore in Rockworld Wordworld World (RWW).

However, it seems to me we encounter what one might call the Joni Paradox. Roughly it runs like this:

It seems that the pinnale of RWW, is an entirely male preserve. The reasons why this should be so are complex and too nuanced to analyse adequately here.

If every artist is a construct, what they are and the way they are seen, a combination of their output and our take on it, their project and our projections - then, essentially, Joni is a man.

At least, she embodies characteristics which housed in a masculine persona, like say The Zim - idiosyncracy, self-belief bordering on arrogance, a certain fecklessness, a ruthless streak - would be forgiven and lauded.

Whilst the title of the blog is a little t-in-c - some of the responses bear out its premise that ultimate recognition of her is denied. Paradoxically, because she is a man and, simultaneously, obviously, not one. The Joni Paradox.

Therefore, she is either the eternal hippie boho chick for some with a piping voice and false chuckle - or for others, the disillusioned middle aged old boiler - shrill, humourless, scorn pouring.

As an aside, do you remember that series on "who was the greatest Briton?"? It seemed to me incrontivertible that the answer was Elizabeth 1. However, I think John Lennon finished ahead of her. Just what you need when your nation faces internal conflict and external threat - a scouse rock'n'roller with a white piano.

The simple fact is that if you take her body of work - it could be argued - conceivably - that of any comparable artist - hers is the one that shows the most complexity, precision, diversity,humanity.

As a person, she strikes me as extraordinarily intelligent, wise and strong. Her strength seems to count against her too. Too much of the "belle dame sans merci" for some.

Of course, many of RWW's most able seamen answered her siren call and ended up broken lovelost on her rock. They broke, not her.

She is the one. The One. If only she'd been born John...

Or, possibly, strawwoman.

...if she were a bloke is, frankly, tosh. It's like saying Jane Austen would have been better had she been a black Jamaican male. You are the product of your upbringing and circumstances. Your gender is a pretty basis element of the latter.

but to declare they would have been better if the someone else. If Joni Mitchell was man she would most likely be a slightly bitter former Canadian Art teacher now reminiscing about her one lp back in the day and how she once shared spliff with Dylan. That's if she left Canada at all. If you have a case for under valuing of women in Pop well you may need to find a better example.

She's hugely talented in all areas - often as good a songwriter as Dylan, Cohen or Neil Young and always a better singer and guitarist than all three - and yet... she's just too, well, earnest for me. Even in full bad-tempered flood she comes across as tediously moany rather than enjoyably bitchy.

She's one of those artists I hugely admire but don't actually much like.

about the ashtray mouthed bicycle to the stars?
(Oooooo, double standards, blah blah blah)

What tosh. I adore her.

Who is this Johnny Mitchell?

Ian

She's mentioned by Nick Hornby in at least one of his books. By definition she is therefore bloke material. Almost everyone over the age of 40 who plays guitar likes her in my experience.

only up to the release of Blue is completely missing out on the best stuff she ever did namely Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns - I know many round here like Hejira but that was too impregnable for me although her later Orchestral reworkings of some its songs put them in a different light.

Did you know that her last CD which seems to be widely derided here was given a 5 star review in MOJO? Bit odd dont you think?

...I don't actually know any women who do like her. All the musicians I have ever met, however, have a deep respect for her (best) work, and rightfully so.

He loves Joni. And he is a man. I bought my first Joni record because he name-checked all the time in the '80's.

*The purple one from Minneapolis.

It's a hard thing to admit, but in the 29 years since Shadows & Light, Joni has not made a decent record. Not one.
Luckly, though, her output in the 1970s was consistently great, including five out-and-out masterpieces (Blue, Court & Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira and the criminally underrated Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, since you ask).
When Jaco Pastorius joined Joni, there was magic in the air. I never saw Jaco perform live, and judging from her gigging record over the past few years, I'll probably never see Joni in concert either. A pity, but we'll always have the records...

doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow

What we tend to overlook is that artists, our heroes, grow old too. Joni, it seems to me, is one of the few who acknowledges time's passing and responds with grace, wisdom and sardonic humour. Shine from a year or two ago is a strong work. It reveals a voice tempered by ill health, age and cigarettes but sharp enough to challenge the prevailing thinking. Earlier,much earlier, in Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody (Wild Things Run Fast), she wrote

Christmas is sparkling
Out on Carol's lawn
This girl of my childhood games
With kids nearly grown and gone
Grown so fast
Like the turn of a page
We look like our mothers did now

Hard to think of Jagger, say, being mature enough to acknowledge the passing of time in quite the same way.

Other artists now seem to acknowledge her greatness as recent work by Herbie Hancock and the album A Tribute to Joni show.

I agree with you on the canon. But, I think there is much worth seeking out in the later stuff. I lost her and found her again. It's an effort worth making

http://open.spotify.com/user/sheevmaster/playlist/5xaSb73p0k3nUTSxLtgt0t

Perhaps I need to bow to superior knowledge of these rancourous outpourings you allude to but it seems to me - as I suggested in my ealier comments "The Joni Paradoxi" - that she seems at once not to be as highly regarded as her male counterparts and yet is somehow not quite female enough. Therefore, when Neil Young makes anti-war statements he is seen as brave. If good old Zim ploughs his own furrow away from the mainstream, he's fiercely independent. Should Joni make a comment about war or the music industry it's sourness, sanctimony - the old crotchet.

In the short film released to support Shine, I see someone with wisdom and grace. Rather touchingly, she says at 65 with no special person in her life she has turned her attention to writing about other things including social issues. I hear a regret, a faint hope, a wistfulness and none of the rancour you infer.

She says something along the lines of to be an optimist you have to be irrational and cling to hope. I don't see the bitterness.

There are always dreams. And false alarms