Word: songe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...know, artists are going willingly into the slaughter." There are, however, a few things she likes. "Most of my favorite artists are black," says Mitchell, who admires James Brown, Etta James and Duke Ellington. "All modern music is black." She also has nothing but praise for Janet Jackson's song Got 'Til It's Gone, an R.-and-B. reworking of Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. But she has mostly contempt for alternative rock. "Everybody says Kurt Cobain was a great writer. I don't see it," Mitchell says. "Why is he a hero? Whining and killing yourself--I fail...
...else on the radio right now; that's both the CD's strength and its burden. Mitchell refuses to rest easily in the folk-pop genre she helped establish. Tiger is composed of crystalline tones: breezy guitars that ring like wind chimes; crisp, jazzy vocals. A few of the songs attack pop radio ("Boring!" she sings). On other numbers Mitchell gets more personal, recounting her mother's disapproval of a live-in boyfriend. Mitchell's reply: "For God's sake!/I'm middle-aged, Mama." And on the album's best song, Harlem in Havana, Mitchell summons up childhood memories...
...past, Mitchell's introspective song lyrics have been laced with references to a haunting event from her youth. In 1964, when Roberta Joan Anderson (Mitchell's given name) was 21, she gave up her daughter for adoption. Last year, however, Mitchell and her daughter Kilauren Gibb were reunited. The singer says she is now learning how to be a mother. "It's tricky to mother someone who's a grown woman," she says. "We've had a couple of skirmishes already. We worked our way through them. She was going through second teenage rebellion with me. It's interesting...
...time when acts like 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys cavort in the upper reaches of the charts like kids atop a treehouse, a CD such as Taming the Tiger, whose title song was inspired by 18th century poet William Blake, is a tough sell--unless you're selling it to fans of 18th century English poetry. But Joni will be Joni when the trends have trended out. To paraphrase Blake, she still burns bright...
...leader, was released last summer. It includes some smart electric tunes (though listeners who actually lived through the 1970s may not be eager to reacquaint themselves with the sound of Moog synthesizers) but reaches its peak with an acoustic, rhythmically virtuosic version of the Sly Stone title song that somehow manages to swing while also suggesting the original funk beat. McBride says he's trying to provoke: "How many more concept albums can you handle? Such and Such plays the music of Gershwin--a lot of that is getting so tired." He points out that when it comes...