Ladies Of The Canyon

RepRise, 1970

Mitchell didn’t appear at Woodstock, but her distanced vantage point, watching it on TV, didn’t prevent her from writing the definitive song about the festival and, by extension, the

60s counterculture movement.

Woodstock’s parent album finds her chronicling other matters too, from the contradictions of fame (For Free) to environmental havoc (Big Yellow Taxi) to the loss of innocence in the transition to adulthood (The Circle Game, written in response to Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain). Horns and strings add fresh texture to her favoured acoustic guitar and piano, but it’s her nuanced, fluting voice that most impresses.