Joni Mitchell: Blue Highlights - Demos, Outtakes, Live [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This Record Store Day 2022 edition is pressed on 180g vinyl and gathers highlights from Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 2. It includes "Hunter," a song cut from Blue at the last minute, and two very different takes on "A Case Of You."

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Record Store Day 2022 edition
• Pressed in the Czech Republic

About the album

Blue is one of those albums people think they know note for note, which makes it a treat to hear it still taking shape. Blue Highlights pulls from the second volume of Joni Mitchell's archive series, which she co-produced with Patrick Milligan, and catches the songs in their sketchbook stage, fifty years after she first put them to tape.

Side A is the workshop. There's an early "A Case Of You" with different words, a demo of "California," the never-finished "Hunter," a version of "Urge For Going" dressed in strings, and an outtake of "River" that adds French horns to the famous piano. Side B moves to the stage for BBC recordings produced by Jeff Griffin, with Mitchell introducing her mountain dulcimer, then playing "Carey," "My Old Man" and another "A Case Of You," plus a spoken intro to "California" before she sings it.

It's an intimate, generous companion to the finished album, the Canadian writer at her most open. If you already own Blue, this is the bit where she takes you round the back of the studio and shows you the plans.

Also at Kops: more Joni Mitchell on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Rhino (cat# R1 671028), the 2022 compilation.