10 Essential Joni Mitchell Songs (2025)

Dear listeners,

Last week, most of Joni Mitchell’s music returned to Spotify, the platform she had boycotted for more than two years. In January 2022, Mitchell followed in the footsteps of fellow Canadian and polio survivor Neil Young in pulling her catalog from the streaming giant, accusing Spotify of platforming people who were “spreading lies that are costing people their lives.” On March 12, though, Young announced his return to Spotify: “Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” he wrote in an announcement on his website. Shortly after, without an official statement explaining her decision, many of Mitchell’s albums returned, too.

I saw plenty of people reacting to this news online with all-caps enthusiasm, but I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I’m elated: Joni Mitchell is probably my favorite musician ever, and over the past year I’ve wanted to put her songs on Amplifier playlists more times than I can count. Since we want our playlists to be accessible to the greatest possible number of listeners, I’ve mostly limited my selections to songs available on Spotify. Now, or at least for the time being, I’ll be able to share Mitchell’s music with you.

But I also admired Mitchell and Young for going against the grain, standing up for what they believed and drawing attention to the darker side of the streaming economy, which often privileges clicks and controversy over art. As Young said in his somewhat resigned statement, he’s not returning because things have suddenly gotten better — it’s just that they’re bad everywhere else, too.

So for that reason, I’m reluctant to greet Mitchell’s return to Spotify with confetti or caps-lock. I will, however, greet it the best way I know how: with a playlist.

The task of creating any kind of “Best of Joni” compilation is way too daunting — an attempt could easily top 400 songs — so I decided to make a playlist comprising songs she played at last summer’s “Joni Jam,” the absolutely spellbinding concert I had the great joy of attending at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington. What impressed me so much about that set list was its balance, toggling between Mitchell’s classics and deep cuts, and also between her early, middle and later eras. You can hear that breadth in this playlist, which stretches from her 1970 breakthrough “Ladies of the Canyon” through her mature 1994 release “Turbulent Indigo” and a recording of her 2022 set at the Newport Folk Festival.

If you’re already a Mitchell fan, I hope this playlist reconnects you with at least one track you haven’t heard in ages. And if you’re a newcomer to Mitchell’s oeuvre, well, I’m almost jealous of all the discoveries and revelations in store for you.

As you’ll hear in many of these songs, Mitchell has always been a gimlet-eyed observer of the present, never afraid to speak her mind when she believes consumerism, technology or conformist thinking are polluting society. Even if her boycott didn’t last forever, I still see it as an invitation to question the culture of convenience we’ve grown accustomed to — and to notice when they start putting the trees in a tree museum.

Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees,

Lindsay

PS: Don’t think I forgot about Neil Young, who deserves an Amplifier playlist of his own. Stay tuned!

Listen along while you read.

1. “Big Yellow Taxi”

2. “Night Ride Home”

Mitchell’s poetic 1991 album “Night Ride Home” is a highlight among her later releases, beloved by many fans but lesser known to the general public than much of her work made in the ’70s. This moody, atmospheric title track — featuring some hypnotic crickets on percussion — sets the tone.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

3. “Raised on Robbery”

This rowdy rocker from Mitchell’s 1974 masterpiece “Court and Spark” chronicles a failed barroom proposition (“Hey, where you going?/Don’t go yet,” Mitchell implores, “Your glass ain’t empty and we just met”), allowing her to show off an underappreciated strength of her songwriting: her sense of humor.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

4. “Come in From the Cold”

When Mitchell played another cut from “Night Ride Home” as her fourth song in the Gorge performance, I knew we’d be in for a thrillingly eclectic set. As she proved on “Court and Spark,” and later on this seven-and-a-half-minute meditation on human connection, Mitchell is an expert at capturing the glowing flush of new romance: “With just a touch of our fingers, I could make our circuitry explode,” she sings, recalling a teenage dalliance. “All we ever wanted, was just to come in from the cold.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

5. “Amelia”

Most days, if you were to ask me my favorite Joni Mitchell song, I’d resent you for making me choose. But on certain days, particularly the lonely, melancholy ones, I’d blurt out, “Amelia.” A highlight of her singular 1976 album “Hejira,” this sparse, searching track plays out as a stream-of-consciousness monologue to the doomed aviator Amelia Earhart, who here symbolizes both the freedom and perils of independence: “A ghost of aviation, she was swallowed by the sky/Or by the sea, like me, she had a dream to fly.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

6. “Carey”

And here is the lighter side of independence: a shimmying travelogue from Mitchell’s 1971 landmark “Blue,” which flips the traditional script and makes a man — that titular “mean ol’ daddy” — an artist’s muse for a change. Still, the fun is fleeting: “Oh you know it sure is hard to leave you, Carey, but it’s really not my home.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

7. “Sex Kills”

Another lesser-known, late-period gem, from the “Turbulent Indigo” album, this ominous track casts a critical eye on America in the 1990s, calling out greed, consumerism and everyday violence. Like “Big Yellow Taxi,” it is unfortunately prophetic and Mitchell’s decision to include it in her 2023 set list underscored that fact.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

8. “Ladies of the Canyon”

Here’s a chiming, vivid snapshot of the Laurel Canyon lifestyle, from Mitchell’s 1970 album of the same name. Onstage at the Gorge, special guest Annie Lennox treated the crowd — and Mitchell herself — to a synth-driven reimagining of the song.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

9. “Blue”

Emotionally complex and acrobatically melodic, this titular centerpiece of Mitchell’s 1971 album isn’t an easy one to cover, but her fellow Canadian Sarah McLachlan nailed it at the Gorge.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

10. “Both Sides Now (Live at the Newport Folk Festival)”

And finally, from the live collection that won this year’s Grammy for best folk album, Mitchell imbues one of her earliest hits with the wisdom of age on this recording from her inspiring set at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival. As she concludes in her rich, resonant voice, now with the life experience to back it up, “Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

Bonus Tracks

In 2021, The Times interviewed 25 musicians about Mitchell’s “Blue” to celebrate its 50th anniversary, resulting in this immersive multimedia feature. I did a ton of reporting for it and it was one of my favorite projects I’d ever worked on. As David Crosby told me of “Blue,” “I remember the first time I heard it, I felt like quitting the business and becoming a gardener.”