Shine (Joni Mitchell album)

Background

In 2002, Joni Mitchell famously left the music business. The public first learned that she had returned to writing and recording in October 2006, when she spoke to The Ottawa Citizen. In an interview with the newspaper, Mitchell "revealed she's recording her first collection of new songs in nearly a decade" but gave few other details.

Four months later, in an interview with The New York Times, Mitchell said that the album was inspired by the war in Iraq and "something her grandson had said while listening to family fighting: 'Bad dreams are good—in the great plan.'"

The Sunday Times wrote in February 2007 that the album has "a minimal feel, a sparseness that harks back to her early work," adding that "rest and some good healers" had restored much of the singer's vocal power. Mitchell herself described Shine as "as serious a work as I've ever done."

The album was launched at the Sunshine Theater on Houston Street, New York City, on September 25, 2007, with a film of the Alberta Ballet performing The Fiddle and the Drum, a ballet devised by choreographer Jean Grand-Maître in collaboration with Mitchell that had premiered in Calgary on February 8 that year. The ballet uses a selection of Mitchell's songs, including "If I Had a Heart" and "If" from Shine, along with images from her art installation Flag Dance, which are projected as a backdrop. The album cover features a scene from The Fiddle and the Drum.

Shine is only the second Joni Mitchell album never to have been distributed by Warner Music Group, the first being Night Ride Home, which was released by Geffen Records after the company was sold to MCA.

Track listing

1. "One Week Last Summer" – 4:59
2. This song won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
3. "This Place" – 3:54
4. In a recent interview, Mitchell referred to a "second guitar song [inspired when] they decided to whittle down this mountain behind my sanctuary and sell it to California as gravel for McMansions."
5. "If I Had a Heart" – 4:04
6. "If I Had a Heart, I'd Cry" is a reaction to the state of the environment and what Mitchell called the current "holy war." In February 2007, The New York Times described the song as "one of the most haunting melodies she has ever written." Of the impetus that inspired her to write the song, Mitchell explained, "My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. I can't cry about it. In a way I'm inoculated. I've suffered this pain for so long. …The West has packed the whole world on a runaway train. We are on the road to extincting ourselves as a species."
7. "Hana" – 3:43
8. "Bad Dreams" – 5:41
9. "Bad Dreams" was inspired by a comment Mitchell's grandson made at the age of three: "Bad dreams are good, in the great plan." In a March 2007 BBC Radio 2 interview with Amanda Ghost, the singer jokingly said she'd promised to "cut him in" on the song's profits.
10. "Bad Dreams Are Good" lyrics appeared as a poem in The New Yorker, September 17, 2007.
11. "Big Yellow Taxi (2007)" – 2:47
12. In March 2007, The Guardian reported that Shine will feature a "new version" of Mitchell's 1970 environmentally-themed hit single.
13. "Night of the Iguana" – 4:38
14. Based upon the play The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams.
15. "Strong and Wrong" – 4:04
16. "Shine" – 7:29
17. Toronto Globe and Mail described this song as "a lush lullaby for the soul."
18. Lyric makes reference to the "Reverend Pearson" (Carlton Pearson).
19. "If" – 5:32
20. Based on the 19th century poem IF—, by Rudyard Kipling, this song is a jazz-inflected composition.

Personnel