6. Joni MitchellBlue

According to Malka everybody who does this chooses Joni Mitchell, so I’m staying true to type. What can you say about Joni Mitchell? For me in my life she was the first female artist. You knew this was her art. You knew this was not something some bloke had cooked up for her. She wasn’t "the singer"; this was her music. This was what she was putting across. I love the confessional aspect of it. I don’t know if I can quote the words exactly, but it’s something like I met someone down a dirt track road, he gave me something and took my camera to sell. It’s about being in Greece or something like that. It’s just all so matter of fact. People who screwed her over, people who she loved- and she just wore her heart on her sleeve. That’s amazing, to do that. She’s not hiding anything; she’s just saying what’s going on. There’s a line "the times when you impress me the most are the times when you don’t really try". As a spotty young man, to hear a woman say that was like, well maybe some girls might like me at some point, and maybe I don’t need to try too hard because they’ll like me for being me. It was a piece of information I needed to hear, I think.