Blue

Joni Mitchell was emotionally wide open when she recorded Blue, and she has said that if someone came into the studio during sessions, she would burst into tears. The doors were locked. Only Mitchell and engineer Henry Lewy were allowed inside. It took her several years to recover from how exposed she felt making it.

The songs came from a period of total personal upheaval. Mitchell had ended her relationship with Graham Nash, spent time living with a cave-dwelling hippie community on the Greek island of Crete, traveled through Europe, and fallen deeply in love with James Taylor, who plays guitar on the album and whose heroin addiction is referenced directly in the title track. Taylor was recording his own album at A&M Studios at the same time, and the two of them appeared together on Carole King's Tapestry sessions during the same weeks. Taylor later described it as a calm, peaceful, amazing, creative time, and said Mitchell had quit smoking, her voice was at the height of its powers, and everything felt natural and easy.

What Mitchell made from all of it is the standard against which confessional songwriting has been measured ever since. "A Case of You," "River," "California," "The Last Time I Saw Richard": every song is a masterclass in saying the most precise and painful thing with the fewest possible words. It has been called the purest emotional record ever made by a human being. That is not an overstatement.