Clouds (album)

Infobox Album | Name = Clouds
Type = Album
Artist = Joni Mitchell

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Released = May 1969
Recorded = 1969 A&M Studios, Hollywood
Genre = Folk-rock
Length = 37:39
Label = Reprise Records
Producer = Joni Mitchell, Paul Rothchild on "Tin Angel"
Reviews =
*Allmusic Rating|3|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hkogtq7ztu4a~T0 link]
*Robert Christgau (C) [http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=joni+mitchell link]
Last album = "Song to a Seagull"
(1968)
This album = "Clouds"
(1969)
Next album = "Ladies of the Canyon"
(1970)

"Clouds" is the 1969 second album by Joni Mitchell. It is sparsely arranged, with little more than Mitchell's voice and solo acoustic guitar for accompaniment. "All Music" describes, "Songs to Aging Children Come" as featuring, "perhaps the most remarkably sophisticated chord sequence in all of pop music,"Cleary, David. [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hkogtq7ztu4a~T0 "Clouds" - Joni Mitchell"] , "AllMusic". Retrieved June 29, 2008.] employing chords chromatically related by tritone or thirds ["Harmonic Palette in Early Joni Mitchell", p.173. Author(s): Lloyd Whitesell. Source: "Popular Music", Vol. 21, No. 2, (May, 2002), pp. 173-193. Published by: Cambridge University Press.] .

Particularly well known are the songs "Both Sides Now", which Mitchell had written for others but sung herself for the first time on this record, and "Chelsea Morning". [Joni Mitchell, [http://jonimitchell.com/biography/bio.cfm?id=232 "Biography: 1968-1970 Emerging Popular Artist"] , "JoniMitchell.com".]

The cover art depicts Mitchell's home town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, showing the South Saskatchewan River that flows through the city, and the Bessborough Hotel, an historic railway hotel built in the days before asphalt-surface highways. In the self-portrait, Mitchell holds the floral emblem of the Province of Saskatchewan: the "western red lily" (aka "prairie lily" or "Lilium philadelphicum" var. "andinum").

In 1970 "Clouds" won the Grammy for best folk album of 1969.

Track listing

All tracks composed and arranged by Joni Mitchell

Side 1
#"Tin Angel" – 4:09
#"Chelsea Morning" – 2:35
#"I Don't Know Where I Stand" – 3:13
#"That Song About the Midway" – 4:38
#"Roses Blue" – 3:52Side 2
#"The Gallery" – 4:12
#"I Think I Understand" – 4:28
#"Songs to Aging Children Come" – 3:10
#"The Fiddle and the Drum" – 2:50
#"Both Sides Now" – 4:32

References