"Blue" - Joni Mitchell AFTER THOUGHTS
Added 2025-03-19 22:25:01 +0000 UTCHey so I went and got lunch and listened to the album again in the car and I feel like I really turned a corner on it. Not like I disliked it before but now that I had listened to it and had some familiarity with it, I could really start listening deeper into it and find the parts that really stood out to me, so I wanted to share what I found with y'all. I also feel like I'm a little pop music brain rotten but I talk about that more in the actually video. again, thanks for taking the time to listen to me yap about music, this is really cool hearing music from different times and I really want to do it again.
Comments
love it love it!! it’s like expanding your brain and going back and reading the classics. can’t wait to see you explore more!
The Soup Witch
2025-04-14 19:30:40 +0000 UTCSo excited about getting into classics with you! You should do Carole King’s Tapestry and James Taylor’s Greatest Hits (1976)
Megan Kelterborn
2025-04-04 11:04:20 +0000 UTCI’m so glad you had this realization. Love your insights as always and so fun to listen along with you
Madison McIntosh
2025-03-25 15:59:56 +0000 UTCAlmost every album I listen to, including constructed bangers and pop needs time and multiple listens to sink in before it actually hits. I don’t know how you do the job you do so consistently 😅🙃
Ella Kaminski
2025-03-24 15:59:59 +0000 UTCPlease do a Fiona Apple album🙏🙏🙏
Sophia Gallagher
2025-03-23 12:25:44 +0000 UTCPrince also did a short cover of A Case of You which is pretty special.
Etta
2025-03-22 12:43:46 +0000 UTCI really appreciate that you took the time to let the album settle. It’s certainly not an upbeat album and I think your friend is right, it’s a black coffee and a croissant on a Sunday morning, with the sun shining through the window and the flowers in the vase just beginning to open, reflection kind of album.
Etta
2025-03-22 12:09:34 +0000 UTCI would love love love to see you react to older albums! Rumors by Fleetwood Mac would be my first choice
Acacia
2025-03-22 05:20:48 +0000 UTCI had a completely different read on The Last Time I Saw Richard, it was super interesting to hear what you saw in the lyrics. I personally love that song, I always saw it as a flip flop between optimism/cynicism on romance between two friends. First Joni is optimistic and her friend Richard is cynical, then Richard married and has a nice marriage and Joni becomes cynical and she’s kind of telling herself “it’s just a phase because even Richard got out of it”.
Jan H.
2025-03-21 01:21:53 +0000 UTCBlue was an album that was on constant rotation when I was young, and I fell in love with it because it would play while my dad was cooking dinner or while my mom was playing with me. While I genuinely love the sound and the lyrics, for me these songs will always be a time capsule. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to listen to this album for the first time in my 30s without the strings attached to it. All that to say I really enjoyed your initial video and I appreciate you taking the time to sit in the music and give us this update 💙
CaitRose
2025-03-20 23:34:27 +0000 UTCCan you react to the Black Is King album please
Jupesimss
2025-03-20 19:49:35 +0000 UTCI actively disliked Joni’s music for about 30 years and then one day I loved it so you know everything has its time.
MF
2025-03-20 18:35:11 +0000 UTCwould love to see you react to some more older albums!
Hannah Gough
2025-03-20 15:30:01 +0000 UTCTHANK YOU OMG
elaina fitzsimmons
2025-03-20 14:41:03 +0000 UTCFriendly reminder that this woman is racist and has doubled down on doing blackface multiple times. No bad feelings because I'm sure a lot of people are unaware.
Melanie Sinclair
2025-03-20 14:33:27 +0000 UTCI thought the reaction was good but this!!!!!!! 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 thank you Troy 🫶🫶🫶🫶
Nighthawk007
2025-03-20 13:30:42 +0000 UTCYeah also exactly what you said that people do fall into a trap of thinking there’s a deeper meaning behind her lyrics… she really was talking about a cane Carey had, apparently he was a bit of a character! 🩷
MoonJunes
2025-03-20 09:49:15 +0000 UTCSo happy to see you give it another go, and tbh while watching stream I thought for a first time listener it clicked more for you more than it would with some. It does take sitting in it and listening to the stories to get it. When you said it’s not sculpted with bangers/handed on a plate, that’s it. We kinda have to *try* as opposed to immediately getting that hit with modern music? Idk. But it’s worth it!
MoonJunes
2025-03-20 09:41:18 +0000 UTCSo glad you took some time and came back to it!
Takara
2025-03-20 05:17:15 +0000 UTCFollowing you was one of my fave things I did last year!!!! Thank you for sharing!!!
BlueHour0414
2025-03-20 03:59:58 +0000 UTCWhat is the doc called?? I need to watch
Madison McIntosh
2025-03-20 03:06:51 +0000 UTCI love that you did this debrief! And love your appreciation for music
Madison McIntosh
2025-03-20 03:05:36 +0000 UTC(Thanks for doing this Troy. One of the best albums of all time. Watch the doc- you won’t be sorry.)
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 02:16:56 +0000 UTCThe line in The Last Time I Saw Richard that gets me: “Dark cafes…only a dark cocoon Before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away Only a phase, these dark café days…” such a bar.
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 02:16:03 +0000 UTCCase of you: “Oh Canada” is the Canadian national anthem (when she sings “oh Canada” all the instrumentation comes in). This song is so vivid and so so good.
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 02:05:13 +0000 UTCI mean.. The Mermaid Cafe!
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 01:35:26 +0000 UTCI mean the intro to Carey sounds like a Jimmy Buffett song
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 01:33:28 +0000 UTCThat Laurel Canyon/Cali crew birthed so much music: CSNY, Joni, Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, Jackson Brown… it goes on & on… in New York, she was recording with James Taylor… how a Canadian survivor of Polio and a bad marriage to a bad man who made her give up her baby for adoption became the bedrock of the American singer-songwriter is truly miraculous.
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 01:32:10 +0000 UTCI love Joni… but I’m old, so there’s that. You should watch Joni Mitchell, woman of heart and mind. It cracks her wide open… https://youtu.be/T95l3_eai88?si=j6bYH5J8pGBaR4lH
Ally ❤️
2025-03-20 01:17:11 +0000 UTCI love experiencing music with you Troy!
Tawni Winns
2025-03-20 00:59:59 +0000 UTCOh and Carey is about the vacation fling she had with the Grecian island red neck from the second verse of California, iirc.
Alexander Ostroff
2025-03-19 23:07:04 +0000 UTCJoni is definitely someone that takes some settling into.. I think you would enjoy her album Court and Spark from 1974 (it's my favorite). The song Help Me is simply a classic, but at the end of the day all her albums are quite amazing. Glad you see you starting this journey!!!
Maddy
2025-03-19 23:06:10 +0000 UTCI think it’s so fair to not have a palate for these kinds of albums if you’re not used to it. I was raised on Joni and Neil Young and CSNY and all them so I was pretty disappointed with the initial reaction but honestly thinking more on it, I’ve had like 20 years to percolate on these albums so I think it’s only fair to give you a few listens through to get it :) I will say that if you ever want to do another Joni album, Court and Spark is one of her jazzier albums (still a masterpiece in its own right) so would probably be a bit more accessible of a listen imo. Fleetwood Mac Rumours (if by some chance you haven’t listened through it) would probably be even more of a stream-style listen, it’s pure pop. Though I would love more of these types of albums that take a little more chewing but maybe in a format where it’s your second or third listen through? If so I would suggest Neil Young’s Harvest, another absolute folk masterpiece from this era.
Alexa B
2025-03-19 23:06:06 +0000 UTCShe starts off in 68/69 doing relatively straightforward folk-pop and then gets looser and looser and By 1979 she ends up recording and releasing a full collaborative album with jazz legend Charles Mingus.
Alexander Ostroff
2025-03-19 22:59:51 +0000 UTCtroy i love that you take so much care with how you listen to music--a lot of people don't revisit an album after the first listen if it doesn't speak to them much (which is totally fine by the way, and i've certainly done that myself), but i just really appreciate your going back and taking the time to give it another try!
lady-lamb21
2025-03-19 22:58:12 +0000 UTCThis was her fourth album and the first few have ones with choruses that are a little more pop-hooky or whatever and then Blue is where she really starts to pivot into more poetic and loose song structure etc. and then by the time you get to Heijira and Hissing of Summer Lawns she starts pulling in a lot of jazz influences and stuff. As the career goes on she gets increasingly less commercial, I guess?
Alexander Ostroff
2025-03-19 22:57:03 +0000 UTCI feel like you would love Joni's song "Help Me." That one was very much engineered to be a banger, and it is! Way more produced than anything on Blue.
Hannah Johnson
2025-03-19 22:55:11 +0000 UTCit took me a few listens for it to really hit me too. there's so many layers to joni and her music. i think in general it often takes a few listens for a song to hit. sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it never clicks. there are some albums i've listened to over and over again and a song i never thought about before will just hit me out of nowhere (i actually had that exact experience watching you listen to little green! i've always thought it was a nice song but i didn't really get it until literally an hour ago). sometimes music is about timing.
Lauryn Goates
2025-03-19 22:53:42 +0000 UTCFor music that sounds deceptively straightforward, it's a lot to digest. Especially when you add in the different context of the early 70s. Glad you went back to it and let it settle in!
Becks
2025-03-19 22:46:36 +0000 UTC
