‘Both Sides Now’ At 25: A Track-By-Track Guide To Joni Mitchell’s Majestic Concept Album

At Last

Another perennial originally written for a film, Mack Gordon and Harry Warren’s classic love song was first performed by Glenn Miller and his orchestra in the 1941 musical Sun Valley Serenade. Miller’s version reached No.2 on the US Billboard charts the following year, but At Last will forever be associated with Etta James, whose stirring 1961 reinvention became her signature tune, inspiring countless other singers to cover it, including Beyoncé and Céline Dion. As arranged for Both Sides Now, At Last gives Mitchell a chance to show off her vocal range, flitting between hushed optimism and gleeful release.

Comes Love

This jazz standard, composed by Sam H Stept, with lyrics by Lew Brown and Charles Tobia, has outlasted Yokel Boy, the Broadway musical it was written for, not least thanks to covers by artists including Sam Cooke, Sarah Vaughan and Rickie Lee Jones. Comes Love gave Mitchell’s fans their first hint of what the Both Sides Now album would contain, when the singer performed it at the A Day In The Garden festival in summer 1998. That autumn, she joined Bob Dylan on a joint tour, during which Comes Love became her closing number. Dylan was reported to have told Mitchell, “I’m going to sound like a hillbilly now,” when he followed her on stage. In 2015, he released Shadows In The Night, the first of three albums exploring the Great American Songbook. Could Mitchell have inspired him?

You’ve Changed

The point in Both Sides Now’s narrative arc where love begins to sour was marked by You’ve Changed, a song published in 1942 with music by Carl Fischer and lyrics by Bill Carey, and most associated with Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday. The version on Both Sides Now features another masterful vocal performance from Mitchell, who sounds by turns wounded, accusatory and resigned to the eventual collapse of her relationship.

Answer Me, My Love

The anguish of fading romance is further captured in Mitchell’s take on a song originally titled Mütterlein, published in April 1952, with lyrics by Gerhard Winkler and Carl Sigman. The following year Sigman penned an English-language version, simply titled Answer Me, and before long both Frankie Laine and David Whitfield took recordings of it to the top of the UK charts. Versions by artists including Roy Orbison and Bryan Ferry followed, but few have captured the feeling of a wronged lover pleading for answers quite like Mitchell.

A Case Of You

Many of the best Joni Mitchell songs have dealt with love’s complexities, and on Both Sides Now she re-recorded a track that originally featured on her classic 1971 album, Blue. A Case Of You is one of Mitchell’s finest songs, a kiss-off to a love so intense she’s certain she’ll never get over it. When Mitchell sang it as a young woman it was as if romance was on tap; here her hushed delivery and the funereal orchestral arrangement suggests a greater understanding of how precious love truly is. The enduring power of A Case Of You means it has become one of Mitchell’s most covered compositions, with notable versions from Prince, Tori Amos, k.d. Lang and James Blake.

Don’t Go To Strangers

First released by doo-wop greats The Orioles in 1954, Don’t Go To Strangers was written by Redd Evans and David Mann, with lyrics by Arthur Kent. The call to a former flame has been sung by a plethora of artists over the years, including Dinah Washington, Paul Weller and Amy Winehouse. Mitchell lays hushed, sultry vocals over the melancholy sweep of the orchestration, emphasising the song’s sense of wee-small-hours desperation.

Sometimes I’m Happy

Another song with its roots in Broadway, Sometimes I’m Happy was originally titled Come On And Pet Me, and was first written by Vincent Youmans, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and William Cary Duncan, for the 1923 musical Mary Jane McKane. The song was first cut before the show hit the stage, but was soon recycled, with new lyrics from Irving Caesar, and given its now-familiar title for the 1925 musical A Night Out. It was reprised in 1927’s Hit The Deck, where it came to prominence. Artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and Count Basie covered it, and the song – Both Sides Now’s jauntiest moment – gives Mitchell a chance to show off her jazz chops.

Don’t Worry ’Bout Me

Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were among the big-hitters to cover Rube Bloom and Ted Koehler’s 1938 song before Mitchell interpreted it on Both Sides Now. At this point in the album, Mitchell’s narrator has accepted that the relationship is finally over (“Why should we cling/To some old faded thing/That used to be?”) and is able to wish her former lover well. Mitchell’s performance is all cool resignation against an orchestral arrangement of gorgeous restraint.

Stormy Weather

Koehler was also responsible for the lyrics to Harold Arlen’s timeless torch song Stormy Weather, made a standard by artists including Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Billie Holiday. While Both Sides Now’s previous tracks put a brave face on the emotional wellbeing of the narrator, here she admits that “gloom and misery” has descended since her breakup. Accordingly, Mitchell gives a nuanced performance teeming with the blues.

I Wish I Were In Love Again

A 1937 song by famed writing partnership Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, I Wish I Were In Love Again featured in the duo’s coming-of-age musical comedy Babes In Arms before being interpreted by Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra and more. Casting aside the grim outlook expressed in Stormy Weather, Both Sides Now’s protagonist has “learned my lesson” and is yearning for new love. A frisky arrangement echoes Mitchell’s playful vocal.

Both Sides Now

Mitchell opted to close this song cycle with another of her best-loved compositions. Both Sides, Now first became a hit for Judy Collins, who released her version on 1967’s Wildflowers before issuing it as a single the following year, after which it went Top 10 in the US. Mitchell’s own take featured on 1969’s Clouds. The stunning re-recording that closes Both Sides Now won arranger Vince Mendoza a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement. As with A Case Of You, the hard-fought experience in Mitchell’s vocals is palpable, bringing a whole new dimension to Mitchell’s reflective lyrics.

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