(Credits: YouTube)
Sun 21 December 2025 17:30, UK
The competitive nature of the music industry was never really a priority for Joni Mitchell.
When someone has that level of artistic integrity and can make songs that are so pristine and beautiful, there’s no sense in trying to worry about what the rest of the rock and roll world is doing and if she can outdo what her friends were doing. The shape of her heart was simply too unique for anyone to copy, but Mitchell felt that the key to all great songs mattered as much about the vocal performance as the raw songwriting.
And it’s not like she didn’t take care of her voice over the years, either. She was never one to completely trash her voice before a show, and even if she had her off nights when singing, the vocal range that she had in her songs always flowed so naturally. There are a lot of impressive moments on tunes like ‘California’, but there’s also tunes like ‘River’ that are so conversational that it practically feels like she’s in the room talking with you.
That kind of attention to detail also came in handy later on in her life as well. Most people weren’t exactly looking for her to have the same high voice that she had in her prime when she reached the 1990s, but when she did a reinterpretation of ‘Both Sides Now’, it sounded like she had finally come full circle in many respects. She had lived a full life and officially seen both sides, and what was once a song about growing older, seeing it on the other side of life was like watching an artist paint her masterpiece.
But a lot of the vocals that she was attuned to before utilising her own voice came from all over the place. She had a healthy respect for artists who could bring across a certain emotion when they sang their songs, like Bob Dylan, but like all great musicians who came before her, Mitchell needed to look far beyond rock and roll. She may have cut her teeth alongside rock bands, but the world of jazz was always much more interesting.
Mitchell had no problem shouting the praises of everyone from Wayne Shorter to Miles Davis when she played, but Billie Holiday is one of the unique cases of a singer whose excellence exists outside of genre. No matter what type of music you listen to, a song like ‘Strange Fruit’ is so stirring and powerful that it’s impossible for anyone not to be moved when they hear her voice.
And in the rock and roll sphere, Mitchell was quick to point out that no one on the planet came anywhere close to what Holiday could do, saying, “Billie Holiday makes you hear the content and the intent of every word that she sings – even at the expense of her pitch or tone. [She] is the one that touches me the deepest. I love Billie Holiday, but there’s no one of that stature among this crop that’s come up.”
Granted, there are still jazz singers who have come and gone since Holiday’s ascent, but there are hardly any of them who seem to have the same size and scope as her voice. There are many who have tried to recapture what she did, but trying to compete with her would be like a guitarist saying they are going to reach the same level as Jimi Hendrix or a drummer thinking that they can go beyond what Buddy Rich had done.
Is it humanly possible? Maybe, but it’s not fair for anyone to hold themselves to that high of a standard for the rest of their lives. Because when you think about longevity in music history, Billie Holiday has the kind of voice that is as iconic as Johnny Cash was with country music or Elvis Presley was with rock and roll.
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