1964–1967: Career beginnings, motherhood, and first marriage She continued to play gigs as a folk musician on weekends at her college and at a local hotel. Around this time she took a $15-a-week job in a Calgary coffeehouse called The Depression Coffee House, "singing long tragic songs in a minor key". She sang at
hootenannies and made appearances on local TV and radio shows in Calgary. In 1964, at the age of 20, she told her mother that she intended to be a folk singer in Toronto. She left western Canada for the first time in her life, heading east for Ontario. Mitchell wrote her first song, "Day After Day", on the three-day train ride. She stopped at the
Mariposa Folk Festival to see
Buffy Sainte-Marie, an American folk singer who had inspired her. A year later, Mitchell played Mariposa, her first gig for a major audience, and years later Sainte-Marie herself covered Mitchell's work. Lacking the $200 needed for musicians' union fees, Mitchell performed at a few gigs at the Half Beat and the Village Corner in Toronto's
Yorkville neighbourhood, but she mostly played non-union gigs "in church basements and
YMCA meeting halls". Rejected from major folk clubs, she resorted to
busking, She lived in a rooming house, directly across the hall from poet
Duke Redbird. Mitchell also began to realize each city's folk scene tended to accord veteran performers the exclusive right to play their signature songs—despite not having written the songs—which Mitchell found insular, contrary to the egalitarian ideal of folk music. She found her best traditional material was already other singers' property. She said she was told You can't sing that. That's my song.' And I named another one. 'You can't sing that. That's my song.' This is my introduction to territorial songs. I ran into it again in Toronto." She resolved to write her own songs. Mitchell discovered that she was pregnant by her Calgary ex-boyfriend Brad MacMath in late 1964. She later wrote, "[He] left me three months pregnant in an attic room with no money and winter coming on and only a fireplace for heat. The spindles of the banister were gap-toothed—fuel for last winter's occupants." She gave birth to a baby girl in February 1965. Unable to provide for her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson, she placed her for adoption. The experience remained private for most of Mitchell's career, although she alluded to it in several songs, such as "
Little Green", which she performed in the 1960s and recorded for the 1971 album
Blue. In "Chinese Cafe", from the 1982 album
Wild Things Run Fast, Mitchell sang, "Your kids are coming up straight / My child's a stranger / I bore her / But I could not raise her." The existence of Mitchell's daughter was not publicly known until 1993, when a roommate from Mitchell's art school days in the 1960s sold the story of the adoption to a tabloid magazine. By that time, Mitchell's daughter, renamed Kilauren Gibb, had already begun a search for her biological parents. Mitchell and her daughter met in 1997. After the reunion, Mitchell said that she lost interest in songwriting, and she later identified her daughter's birth and her inability to take care of her as the moment when her songwriting inspiration had begun. A few weeks after the birth of her daughter, Mitchell was playing gigs again around Yorkville, often with a friend, Vicky Taylor, and was beginning to sing original material for the first time, written with her unique open tunings. In March and April she found work at the Penny Farthing, a folk club in Toronto. There she met New York City-born American folk singer Charles Scott "Chuck" Mitchell, from
Michigan. Chuck was immediately attracted to her and impressed by her performance, and he told her that he could get her steady work in the coffeehouses he knew in the United States. Mitchell left Canada for the first time in late April 1965. She travelled with Chuck Mitchell to the US, where they began playing music together. Mitchell is both a Canadian and US citizen. While living at the Verona apartments in Detroit's
Cass Corridor, the couple regularly performed at area coffee houses, including the Chess Mate on Livernois, near Six Mile Road; the Alcove bar, near
Wayne State University; the Rathskeller, a restaurant on the campus of the
University of Detroit; and the Raven Gallery in
Southfield. She began playing and composing songs in alternative guitar tunings taught to her by a fellow musician,
Eric Andersen, in Detroit.
Oscar Brand featured her several times on his CBC television program ''
Let's Sing Out'' in 1965 and 1966. The marriage and partnership of Joni and Chuck Mitchell ended with their divorce in early 1967, and she moved to New York City to follow her musical path as a solo artist. She played venues up and down the East Coast, including
Philadelphia,
Boston, and
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She performed frequently in coffeehouses and
folk clubs and, by this time creating her own material, became well known for her unique songwriting and innovative guitar style.
1968–1969: Breakthrough with Song to a Seagull and Clouds Folk singer
Tom Rush had met Mitchell in Toronto and was impressed with her songwriting ability. He took "Urge for Going" to the popular folk artist
Judy Collins, but she was not interested in the song at the time, so Rush recorded it himself. Country singer
George Hamilton IV heard Rush performing it and recorded a hit country version. Other artists who recorded Mitchell's songs in the early years were Sainte-Marie ("The Circle Game"),
Dave Van Ronk ("
Both Sides Now"), and eventually Collins ("Both Sides Now", a top ten hit for her, and "Michael from Mountains", were both included on her 1967 album
Wildflowers). Collins also covered "Chelsea Morning", another recording that eclipsed Mitchell's own commercial success early on. While Mitchell was playing one night in 1967 in the Gaslight South, a club in
Coconut Grove, Florida,
David Crosby walked in and was immediately struck by her ability and her appeal as an artist. She accompanied him back to Los Angeles, where he set about introducing her and her music to his friends. Soon she was being managed by
Elliot Roberts, who, after being urged by Sainte-Marie, had first seen her play in a Greenwich Village coffee house. He had a close business association with
David Geffen. Roberts and Geffen were to have important influences on her career. She was signed to the Warners-affiliated
Reprise label by talent scout
Andy Wickham. Crosby convinced Reprise to let Mitchell record a solo acoustic album without the folk-rock overdubs in vogue at that time, and his clout earned him a producer's credit in March 1968, when Reprise released her debut album, known either as
Joni Mitchell or
Song to a Seagull. Mitchell toured steadily to promote the LP. The tour helped create eager anticipation for Mitchell's second LP,
Clouds, which was released in April 1969. This album contained Mitchell's own versions of some of her songs already recorded and performed by other artists: "
Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", and "Tin Angel". The covers of both LPs, including a self-portrait on
Clouds, were designed and painted by Mitchell, a blending of her painting and music that she continued throughout her career.
1970–1972: Ladies of the Canyon and Blue In March 1970,
Clouds produced her first
Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance. The following month, Reprise released her third album,
Ladies of the Canyon. Mitchell's sound was already beginning to expand beyond the confines of acoustic folk music and toward pop and rock, with more overdubs, percussion, and backing vocals, and for the first time, many songs composed on piano, which became a hallmark of Mitchell's style in her most popular era. Her own version of "
Woodstock", slower than the cover by
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, was performed solo on a
Wurlitzer electric piano. The album also included the already-familiar song "The Circle Game" and the environmental anthem "
Big Yellow Taxi", with its famous lines, "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot", and "don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone?".
Ladies of the Canyon was an instant smash on
FM radio and sold briskly, eventually becoming Mitchell's first gold album (selling over a half million copies). She made a decision to stop touring for a year and just write and paint, yet she was still voted "Top Female Performer" for 1970 by
Melody Maker, a leading UK pop music magazine. On the April 1971 release of
James Taylor's
Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon album, Mitchell is credited with backup vocals on the track "
You've Got a Friend". The songs she wrote during the months she took off for travel and life experience appeared on her next album,
Blue, released in June 1971. Comparing Joni Mitchell's talent to his own, David Crosby said, "By the time she did
Blue, she was past me and rushing toward the horizon".
Blue was an almost instant critical and commercial success, peaking in the top 20 of the
Billboard albums chart in September and also hitting the British Top 3. The lushly produced "
Carey" was the single at the time, but musically, other parts of
Blue departed further from the sounds of
Ladies of the Canyon. Simpler, rhythmic acoustic parts allowed a focus on Mitchell's voice and emotions ("All I Want", "
A Case of You"), while others such as "
Blue", "
River" and "
The Last Time I Saw Richard" were sung to her rolling piano accompaniment. Her most
confessional album, Mitchell later said of
Blue, "I have, on occasion, sacrificed myself and my own emotional makeup, ... singing 'I'm selfish and I'm sad', for instance. We all suffer for our loneliness, but at the time of
Blue, our pop stars never admitted these things." In its lyrics, the album was regarded as an inspired culmination of her early work, with depressed assessments of the world around her serving as counterpoint to exuberant expressions of romantic love (for example, in "
California"). Mitchell later remarked, "At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong."
Court and Spark, released in January 1974, saw Mitchell begin the flirtation with
jazz and
jazz fusion that marked her experimental period ahead.
Court and Spark went to No. 1 on the
Cashbox Album Charts. The LP made Mitchell a widely popular act for perhaps the only time in her career, on the strength of popular tracks such as the rocker "
Raised on Robbery", which was released right before Christmas 1973, and "
Help Me", which was released in March of the following year, and became Mitchell's only Top 10 single when it peaked at No. 7 in the first week of June. "
Free Man in Paris" was another hit single and staple in her catalogue. While recording
Court and Spark, Mitchell had tried to make a clean break with her earlier folk sound, producing the album herself and employing jazz/pop
fusion band the
L.A. Express as what she called her first real backing group. In February 1974, her tour with the L.A. Express began, and they received rave notices as they travelled across the United States and Canada during the next two months. A series of shows at L.A.'s
Universal Amphitheater from August 14–17 were recorded for a live album. In November, Mitchell released that album,
Miles of Aisles, a two-record set including all but two songs from the L.A. concerts (one selection each from the
Berkeley Community Theatre, on March 2, and the L.A. Music Center, on March 4, were also included in the set). The live album slowly moved up to No. 2, matching
Court and Sparks chart peak on
Billboard. "Big Yellow Taxi", the live version, was also released as a single and did reasonably well (she released another version of the song in 2007). In January 1975,
Court and Spark received four nominations for Grammy Awards, including
Grammy Award for Album of the Year, for which Mitchell was the only woman nominated. She won only the
Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals.
1975–1977: The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira Mitchell went into the studio in early 1975 to record acoustic demos of some songs that she had written since the
Court and Spark tour. A few months later she recorded versions of the tunes with her band. Her musical interests were diverging from both the folk and the pop scene of the era, toward less structured, more jazz-inspired pieces, with a wider range of instruments. The new song cycle was released in November 1975 as
The Hissing of Summer Lawns. On "The Jungle Line", she made an early effort at
sampling a recording of African musicians, something that became more commonplace among Western rock acts in the 1980s. "In France They Kiss on Main Street" continued the lush pop sounds of
Court and Spark, and efforts such as the title song and "Edith and the Kingpin" chronicled the underbelly of suburban lives in Southern California. During 1975, Mitchell also participated in several concerts in the
Rolling Thunder Revue tours featuring
Bob Dylan and
Joan Baez, and in 1976 she performed as part of
The Last Waltz by
the Band. In January 1977, Mitchell received a nomination for the
Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the album
The Hissing of Summer Lawns, though the 1977 Grammy for that category went to
Linda Ronstadt. In early 1976, Mitchell travelled with friends who were driving cross country to Maine. Afterwards, she drove back to California alone and composed several songs during her journey which featured on her next album, 1976's
Hejira. She stated that "This album was written mostly while I was traveling in the car. That's why there were no piano songs ..." Mitchell herself believes the album to be unique. In 2006 she said, "I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs, but I feel the songs on
Hejira could only have come from me." She called her blackface alter ego "
Art Nouveau", inspired by a black man who once complimented her while walking down an LA street. She wore blackface several more times throughout her career and has consistently defended her use of it as late as 2017. However, in 2024, the album cover art on streaming services and physical reissues was changed to a photo of Mitchell's face seemingly inside the open mouth of a wolflike dog, an outtake from the 1985 photo sessions for the later album
Dog Eat Dog. No announcement was made about the change nor any official reason given, and Mitchell has not commented on the matter. A few months after the release of ''Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
, Mitchell was contacted by the esteemed jazz composer, bandleader and bassist Charles Mingus, who had heard the orchestrated song "Paprika Plains", and wanted her to work with him. She began a collaboration with Mingus, who died before the project was completed in 1979. She finished the tracks, and the resulting album, Mingus'', was released in June 1979, though it was poorly received in the press. Fans were confused over such a major change in Mitchell's overall sound, and though the album topped out at No. 17 on the
Billboard albums chart—a higher placement than ''Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
—Mingus'' still fell short of gold status, making it her first album since the 1960s not to sell at least half a million copies. Mitchell's tour to promote
Mingus began in August 1979 in Oklahoma City and concluded six weeks later with five shows at Los Angeles'
Greek Theatre and one at the
Santa Barbara County Bowl, where she recorded and filmed the concert. It was her first tour in several years, and with Pastorius, jazz guitarist
Pat Metheny, and other members of her band, Mitchell also performed songs from her other jazz-inspired albums. When the tour ended she began a year of work, turning the tapes from the Santa Barbara County Bowl show into a two-album set and a concert film, both to be called
Shadows and Light. Her final release on Asylum Records and her second live double album, it was released in September 1980, and made it up to No. 38 on the
Billboard charts. A single from the LP, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?", Mitchell's duet with
The Persuasions (her opening act for the tour), bubbled under on
Billboard, just missing the Hot 100.
1981–1987: Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog, and second marriage For a year and a half, Mitchell worked on the tracks for her next album. While the album was being readied for release, her friend
David Geffen, founder of
Asylum Records, decided to start a new label,
Geffen Records. Still distributed by Warner Bros. (who controlled Asylum Records), Geffen negated the remaining contractual obligations Mitchell had with Asylum and signed her to his new label.
Wild Things Run Fast (1982) marked a return to pop songwriting, including "Chinese Cafe/
Unchained Melody", which incorporated the chorus and parts of the melody of the famous
The Righteous Brothers hit, and "
(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care", a remake of the
Elvis chestnut, which charted higher than any Mitchell single since her 1970s sales peak when it climbed to No. 47 on the charts. The album peaked on the
Billboard charts in its fifth week at No. 25. During this period she recorded with bassist and sound engineer
Larry Klein, whom she married in 1982. In early 1983, Mitchell began her "Refuge" world tour, visiting Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia and then going back to the United States. A performance from the tour was videotaped and later released on home video (and later DVD) as
Refuge of the Roads. As 1984 ended, Mitchell was writing new songs when she received a suggestion from Geffen that perhaps an outside producer with experience in the modern technical arenas that they wanted to explore might be a worthy addition. Mitchell hired the British
synthpop musician
Thomas Dolby to assist with synthesizers and production, but found working with him difficult: "I was reluctant when Thomas was suggested because he had been asked to produce the record [by Geffen], and would he consider coming in as just a programmer and a player? So on that level we did have some problems ... He may be able to do it faster. He may be able to do it better, but the fact is that it then wouldn't really be my music."
Dog Eat Dog, released in October 1985, was only a moderate seller, reaching No. 63 on
Billboards Top Albums Chart, Mitchell's lowest chart position since her first album peaked at No. 189 almost eighteen years before. One of the songs on the album, "Tax Free", created controversy by lambasting "
televangelists" and what she saw as a drift to the
religious right in American politics. "The churches came after me", she wrote, "they attacked me, though the
Episcopalian Church, which I've seen described as the only church in America which actually uses its head, wrote me a letter of congratulation." This album was also Mitchell's first since Geffen Records was sold to
MCA Inc., meaning that
Night Ride Home was her first album not to be initially distributed by WEA (now
Warner Music Group).
1994–1999: Turbulent Indigo, Taming the Tiger, and divorce 's dog
Buddy in the
Oval Office in 1998|265x265px To wider audiences, the real return to form for Mitchell came with 1994's
Grammy-winning
Turbulent Indigo. The recording of the album coincided with the end of Mitchell's marriage to musician
Larry Klein after 12 years; Klein was also co-producer of the album.
Indigo was seen as Mitchell's most accessible set of songs in years. Songs such as "Sex Kills", "Sunny Sunday", "Borderline" and "The Magdalene Laundries" mixed social commentary and guitar-focused melodies for "a startling comeback". The album won two Grammy awards, including Best Pop Album, and it coincided with a much-publicized resurgence in interest in Mitchell's work by a younger generation of singer-songwriters. In 1996, Mitchell agreed to release a greatest
Hits collection, despite initial concerns that such a release would damage sales of her catalogue. Reprise also agreed to release a second album, called
Misses, that would include some of the lesser-known songs from her career.
Hits charted at No. 161 in the US, and achieved gold certification in the UK and Australia. Mitchell also included on
Hits, for the first time on an album, her first recording, a version of "Urge for Going" which preceded
Song to a Seagull but was previously released only as a
B-side. listening to premix of
Herbie Hancock's ''
Gershwin's World'' (
Venice Beach, California, in 1999)|251x251px Two years later, Mitchell released her final set of "original" new work before nearly a decade of other pursuits, 1998's
Taming the Tiger. She promoted
Tiger with a return to regular concert appearances, including a co-headlining tour with
Bob Dylan and
Van Morrison. On the album, Mitchell had played a custom guitar equipped with a
Roland hexaphonic pick-up that connected to a Roland VG-8 modelling processor. The device allowed Mitchell to play any of her many alternate tunings without having to re-tune the guitar. The guitar's output, through the VG-8, was transposed to any of her tunings in real-time. It was around this time that critics also began to notice a real change in Mitchell's voice, particularly on her older songs; the singer later confirmed the change, explaining that "I'd go to hit a note and there was nothing there". While her more limited range and huskier vocals have sometimes been attributed to her smoking (she was described by journalist Robin Eggar as "one of the world's last great smokers"),
2000–2005: Both Sides Now, retirement tour and retrospectives The singer's next two albums featured no new songs and, Mitchell has said, were recorded to "fulfill contractual obligations", In 1998 she told
The New York Times that her memoirs were "in the works", that they would be published in as many as four volumes, and that the first line would be "I was the only black man at the party." In 2005, Mitchell said that she was using a tape recorder to get her memories "down in the oral tradition".
2006–2010: Shine and other late recordings In an interview with the
Ottawa Citizen in October 2006, Mitchell "revealed that she was recording her first collection of new songs in nearly a decade", but gave few other details. Early media reports characterized the album as having "a minimal feel ... that harks back to [Mitchell's] early work" and a focus on political and environmental issues. She worked with the French-Canadian TV director Mario Rouleau, well known for work in art and dance for television, such as
Cirque du Soleil. She also filmed portions of the rehearsals for a documentary that she was working on. Of the flurry of recent activity she quipped, "I've never worked so hard in my life." On February 10, 2008, Hancock's recording won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. It was the first time in 43 years that a jazz artist had taken the top prize at the annual award ceremony. In accepting the award, Hancock paid tribute to Mitchell as well as to
Miles Davis and
John Coltrane. At the same ceremony Mitchell won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Pop Performance for the opening track, "One Week Last Summer", from her album
Shine. In 2009, Mitchell stated she had the skin condition
Morgellons and that she would leave the music industry to work toward giving more credibility to people who suffer from Morgellons. In a 2010 interview with the
Los Angeles Times, Mitchell was quoted as saying that singer-songwriter
Bob Dylan, with whom she had worked closely in the past, was a fake and a
plagiarist. The controversial remark was widely reported by other media. Mitchell did not explain the contention further, but several media outlets speculated that it may have related to the allegations of plagiarism surrounding some lyrics on Dylan's 2006 album
Modern Times.
2010–2022: Health problems, recovery, and archival projects Although Mitchell said that she would no longer tour or give concerts, she made occasional public appearances to speak on environmental issues. Mitchell divides her time between her longtime home in Los Angeles, and the property in
Sechelt, British Columbia, that she has owned since the early 1970s. "L.A. is my workplace", she said in 2006, "B.C. is my heartbeat". Since 2011, she said she focuses mainly on her visual art, which she does not sell and displays only on rare occasions. In March 2015, Mitchell suffered a
brain aneurysm rupture, which required her to undergo physical therapy and take part in daily rehabilitation. Mitchell made her first public appearance following the aneurysm when she attended a
Chick Corea concert in Los Angeles in August 2016. She made a few other appearances, and in November 2018 David Crosby said that she was learning to walk again. Since 2018, Mitchell has approved a number of archival projects. In September 2018, Eagle Rock Entertainment released the Murray Lerner-directed documentary
Both Sides Now: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970, which included restored video footage and previously unseen interviews with Mitchell, plus a separate program featuring the complete concert uninterrupted. On November 2, 2018, Mitchell released an 8-LP vinyl reissue of
Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced. A limited-edition blue vinyl edition of
Blue followed in January 2019. On November 7, 2018, Mitchell attended the
Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration concert in Los Angeles. To celebrate her 75th birthday, artists
Brandi Carlile,
Emmylou Harris,
James Taylor,
Chaka Khan,
Graham Nash,
Seal,
Kris Kristofferson, and others interpreted songs written by Mitchell. Fellow Canadian artist
Diana Krall offered two performances. Selections from that night's performances were released on DVD, along with a separate CD release. A vinyl edition of the album was released for Record Store Day in April 2019. Mitchell later attended another tribute concert, Songs Are Like Tattoos, which featured
Joni 75 participant
Brandi Carlile performing Mitchell's
Blue album in full. Mitchell approved
Joni: The Joni Mitchell Sessions, a book of photos taken and collected by Norman Seeff, released in November 2018. Mitchell also revisited her poetry with
Morning Glory on the Vine, a collection of facsimile handwritten lyrics, poetry and artwork originally compiled in 1971 as a gift for friends and family. The expanded and reformatted wide-release edition of
Morning Glory on the Vine was published on October 22, 2019, in a standard hardcover edition, as well as a limited signed edition. In September 2020, it was announced that Mitchell and Rhino Records had created the
Joni Mitchell Archives, a series of catalogue releases containing material from the singer's personal vaults. The project's first release, a five-disc collection titled
Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963–1967), followed on October 30, 2020. In April 2022 Mitchell received a Grammy Award for 'Best Historical Album' for this release. She showed up personally to collect the award. On the same day, Mitchell released
Early Joni – 1963 and
Live at Canterbury House – 1967 (both culled from the 5-CD box set) as standalone vinyl releases. A special remastered collection of Mitchell's first four albums (
Song to a Seagull,
Clouds,
Ladies of the Canyon and
Blue) was released on July 2, 2021, as
The Reprise Albums (1968–1971). The collection is the first to feature a new mix of Mitchell's 1968 debut album, overseen by Mitchell herself. Commenting on the original mix of
Song to a Seagull, Mitchell called it "atrocious" and said it sounded like it "had been recorded under a bowl of
Jello". On January 28, 2022, Mitchell demanded that
Spotify remove her songs from its streaming service in solidarity with her long-time friend and fellow childhood polio survivor
Neil Young, who removed his tracks from the streaming platform in protest against
COVID-19 misinformation on the popular Spotify-hosted podcast
The Joe Rogan Experience. She wrote on her website: "Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue." British
National Health Service doctor and author
Rachel Clarke tweeted: "Both Neil Young & Joni Mitchell… know painfully well how much harm, suffering & avoidable death
anti-vaxxers can cause."
Since 2022: Return to live performances On July 24, 2022, Joni Mitchell appeared unannounced as a special guest in the closing performance of the final day of the
Newport Folk Festival in
Rhode Island, where she had first played in 1967, as part of a set billed as "
Brandi Carlile and Friends". Supported by a group of well-wisher musicians, she participated in a 13-song set of her own material and covers, including one that she played as a solo on electric guitar. In 2017, Mitchell had been inspired by a music-making visit from an old friend, singer-songwriter
Eric Andersen,
Jess Wolfe,
Holly Laessig,
Taylor Goldsmith,
Blake Mills, and
Hozier. The Newport set was released as a
live album in 2023 and won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2024. On October 19, 2022, Carlile announced that Mitchell would play a headline concert, billed as "Joni Jam 2", in a weekend event at Washington State's
Gorge Amphitheatre, "one of the most beautiful venues in the world", on June 10, 2023. Her 2023 appearance at Gorge Amphitheatre attracted a capacity audience of 27,000. In her first headline concert in 23 years, supported by 19 singers and musicians, Mitchell performed a nearly three-hour set of 21 songs plus a three-song encore in which she played guitar.
Annie Lennox, who sang on "Ladies of the Canyon", said Mitchell was "a visionary, a legend and an inspiration." Mitchell was awarded the 2023
Gershwin Prize for her lifetime contributions to popular music. She was celebrated with a concert on March 2 in Washington, D.C., where musicians taking part included
Brandi Carlile,
Annie Lennox,
Angélique Kidjo,
Herbie Hancock,
Diana Krall,
Cyndi Lauper,
Graham Nash,
James Taylor,
Ledisi,
Lucius,
Marcus Mumford,
Sara Bareilles and Celisse. Mitchell performed "
Summertime" and participated in all-star renditions of her songs "Big Yellow Taxi" and "The Circle Game". On February 4, 2024, Mitchell performed for the first time at the
66th Annual Grammy Awards, singing "Both Sides Now" accompanied by many of the musicians who perform at her private Joni Jams. Further Joni Jam concert dates were announced for Saturday October 19 and Sunday October 20, 2024, at the 18,000 capacity
Hollywood Bowl, where Mitchell performed three-hour sets with
Brandi Carlile, Marcus Mumford, Annie Lennox and numerous supporting musicians. On March 22, 2024, Mitchell restored her music to Spotify after Neil Young did the same, ending her protest over Spotify's hosting of
The Joe Rogan Experience. On November 24, 2025, the
Juno Awards announced that Mitchell would receive a lifetime achievement award at its 2026 ceremony in Hamilton. This was only the third time this award had been presented. On February 1, 2026, she wore an ICE OUT pin on her lapel to the
Grammy Awards in protest of the recent actions of
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as did with other celebrities. At the event, she won a Grammy Award for
Best Historical Album for her retrospective collection
Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol. 4: The Asylum Years. ==Legacy==