Quotes about Joni Mitchell

I only get compared to women, which is crazy because often the women they compare me to… we just have a similar hairstyle. Whether it’s Joni Mitchell or Florence and the Machine – our music doesn’t always sound anything alike. But we just all have long hair.

You wouldn’t find a Joni Mitchell on ‘X Factor;’ that’s not the place. ‘X Factor’ is a specific thing for people that want to go through that process – it’s a factory, you know, and it’s owned and stitched-up by puppet masters.

I think Alison Krauss is one of the most amazing singers ever. As a songwriter – this is gonna sound cheesy – I love Randy Newman. And my mom passed on a love of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. At one point I was so into the Indigo Girls, just like I was so into the Dixie Chicks, those female harmonies.

The writers that I aspire to, like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, they’ll tell you that the work gets harder, not easier. And they set that bar for us where we’re always striving to do something better than the last time, whether it’s the next song or just the next line.

I’ve had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that’s just what I’ve always liked – people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

I wanted to be Joni Mitchell.

One of the biggest obstacles I’ve overcome in my life was thinking I didn’t deserve to be successful. Artistically I’m not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I’m not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.

I don’t know any guitar player, any of the real greats, who don’t rate Joni Mitchell up there with the best of them.

I’m not the kind of guy who can be sitting around listening to Joni Mitchell, chilling. I’d rather bash my head against a wall.

I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell in high school. She was sort of an inspiration to me. I think she’s a great lyricist, and she makes interesting choices.

Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction – always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it’s done.

I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell… who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.

I’ve always played acoustically – it’s how I learned. I grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dylan and what have you.

I am multiracial, and I went through different phases – at one point, I listened to Wu-Tang and hip-hop, and then the next year I listened to Joni Mitchell.

I grew up in the ’70s, and I hear in my own stuff a lot of what I grew up listening to, which is to say I hear a lot of Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder.

I’ve always loved aggressive, hard, noisy, yet melodic bands, and at the same time I’ve always loved ‘Blue’ by Joni Mitchell.

I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music.