Blue
RepRise, 1971
Sudden fame and celebrity didn’t sit well with Mitchell, who chose to escape by taking a year off and mooching around Europe. Her sojourn on the island of
Crete helped restore her creative appetite, and she discovered the Appalachian dulcimer and wrote the first batch of intensely personal, emotionally transparent songs that would make up Blue.
The writing is raw and direct, the spare arrangements heightening the lyrical content.
My Old Man details her failed relationship with Graham Nash, while All I Want is one of three tunes aimed at another recent partner, James Taylor.
Faultless and revelatory, Blue is the ultimate break-up album.