Here is a statement that should probably be uncontroversial: Taylor Swift is the world’s most popular musical artist. To this I may add another one: her audience is predominantly if not exclusively female.
In this respect, Swift continues a certain tradition of (largely white) confessional singer-songwriter types, whose productions are written both from and for a distinctly feminine perspective. Think Carly Simon, Carole King, Jewel, Sarah McLachlan, Billie Eilish, among many others.
Interestingly, the tropes we associate with this sub-genre seem not to apply to its progenitor—namely, Joni Mitchell, whose popularity, influence and critical reputation transcend the categories that constrain so many of her heirs. And yet Mitchell is in many ways among the most feminine of popular singers. You notice this instantly if you try to sing her songs—they are not just pitched well into the mezzo-soprano range (during her prime) but acrobatically so. In her prime, she could hold melodies in the fifth octave without strain. It is impossible for most males to replicate this.
In her prime, Mitchell could hold melodies in the fifth octave without strain. It is impossible for most males to replicate this.
And I think this is not reducible to the physical fact of Mitchell being able to access a higher register in her singing. Listen to the dizzying way she runs up and down the scale in the chorus to “All I Want”—as she sings “when I think of your kisses my mind see-saws”—and to how her modulation seems to realize the meaning of the words. This technique allowed her to compress an astonishing intensity of feeling into her vocal runs, which few male singers can equal. Freddie Mercury, who was possessed of a titanic voice, was compelled to resort to camp with his more operatic stylings; the Buckleys, père et fils, too often sounded self-indulgent.
It is not incidental that the one notable male singer to successfully cover Mitchell was Prince, who possessed one of the widest vocal ranges in recorded music. But, of course, a performance is more than just technique, and it must be added that Prince’s natural androgyny allowed him to capture the sense of Mitchell’s singing without seeming parodic.
Mitchell’s distinctly feminine approach to her music even extends to her guitar playing. Though an enormously accomplished player, she was compelled, rather than demonstrating technical proficiency, to devise an idiosyncratic technique, married to a variety of unusual tunings, to accommodate a hand weakened by a childhood bout of polio. As such, her approach to guitar playing stressed delicacy rather than the expressive histrionics associated with her male counterparts.
For those less familiar, Joni Mitchell’s imperial phase roughly breaks down as follows:
- Embryonic genius already capable of producing transcendently great music (Clouds, 1969);
- Fully-formed singer-songwriter working within but not limited to the prevailing folk idioms (Ladies of the Canyon, 1970, and Blue, 1971);
- Creator of sophisticated adult pop music that freely draws upon both folk and jazz instrumentation, while employing innovative studio techniques (For the Roses, 1972, and Court and Spark, 1974);
- Experimental artist stretching the boundaries of conventional song forms without (yet) sacrificing her innate melodicism (The Hissing of Summer Lawns, 1975, and Hejira, 1976).
These days I find myself returning most often to Court and Spark, now 50 years old (what was it about 1974 exactly?), for the way it balances the emotional intensity of her early work with increasingly complex arrangements.
Throughout, Mitchell’s songs are profoundly feminine in their lyrical sensibilities (much in the way that Dylan’s can be extremely male). Blue and For the Roses in particular address the female experience of being in and out of love. And for this she paid a price that her male counterparts didn’t. Rolling Stone magazine (which was always a shallower and tawdrier publication than its overhyped legacy might suggest) notoriously referred to her as the “Queen of El Lay”, and published a two-page chart detailing a network of romantic/sexual relationships among the Laurel Canyon set and various industry hangers-on, with Mitchell herself at the center.
And yet the dramatis personae with which Mitchell had both dalliances and serious love affairs included a remarkable range of artists, including David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Sam Shepard, and Leonard Cohen.
As she gets into her wilder mid-70s period, males seem to drop more out of the picture, and her femininity becomes increasingly self-sufficient, if not solipsistic. But despite being shorn of nearly all conventional female singer-songwriter trappings, Hejira remains a deeply feminine work. Mitchell remains a searcher, but her object of desire has become more obscure. Supported by Jaco Pastorious’ multitracked fretless bass, she reproduces one of popular music’s great—historically male—themes on songs like “Amelia” and “Coyote”: the wanderer who cannot be tied down by domestic comforts.
On Hejira (1976), she reproduces one of popular music’s great—historically male—themes on songs like “Amelia” and “Coyote”: the wanderer who cannot be tied down by domestic comforts.
One doesn’t wish to reduce Mitchell’s colossal artistry to her physical gifts, but she never was quite the same after a million-and-a-half cigarettes pulled her voice down into the contralto range, where it has since remained. Unlike Dylan, she was unable to find a home for her later voice (though of course his was never the equal of hers in their respective primes).
But what explains how her critical and popular appeal leap-frogged the boundaries that have hemmed in similar artists, including many she herself influenced? Perhaps ironically, much of it has to do with her intense self-absorption. But it must be allowed that her egoistic qualities were cut by genius. Artistic brilliance after all can make self-examination compelling rather than merely solipsistic—the difference between, say, Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and the average person’s journal.
But also: from her romantic era through her itinerant wanderer period, Mitchell never displayed the kind of conscious audience-flattering we associate with her Lilith Fair descendants. Even on her earlier albums she sounds like a woman in search not of an audience but of her male equal. Of course, she never found him.
