Joni Mitchell

Roberta Joan Anderson started in Saskatoon nightclubs, drifted through Toronto, then crossed into the States in 1965. Other singers recorded her songs first - "Both Sides, Now", "Chelsea Morning" - which opened the door to Reprise and her 1968 debut, Song to a Seagull. She settled in Southern California and wrote "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock" in 1970, but it was 1971's Blue that became a landmark: Rolling Stone later ranked it the third greatest album ever made, and NPR called it the greatest album made by a woman. By 1974's Court and Spark she was pulling in jazz players and radio hits, her voice dropping from mezzo-soprano to contralto, her open tunings growing knotted and strange - she worked with Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Charles Mingus before he died. She designed her own covers, called herself a painter derailed by circumstance, released her last album of new songs in 2007, and stepped back. A brain aneurysm in 2015 nearly ended it, but she surfaced again in 2021, took a Kennedy Center Honor, and walked onstage unannounced at Newport in 2022 - still here, still performing.