4. Joni MitchellBlue

The place I had moved to when I was listening to these Joni Mitchell albums was this really big apartment… I suppose the rental market was very different to how it is now. I lived there with my boyfriend at the time. We painted the living room dark purple, we had a lot of black furniture and a dark blue carpet. It suited me. It was sort of a cave.

I went to a music high school that wasn’t in my hometown. I could have stayed at home and travelled to school because it wasn’t that far but I didn’t want that… A lot of things were going on in my life and I needed to move on. These albums are what I was listening to around this time. I love her other albums as well but there’s something special with these ones that you listen to so many times over and over and I sang along to them so much. They were a way of learning how to sing.

I had always listened a lot to pop music and jazz but this was probably the first singer songwriter kind of style I’d listened to. I was never into a jazz singer sounding jazz if you know what I mean. I’m always more concerned with the individual sound and finding your own voice and way of doing songs.