Masterpiece: Court & Spark

[Today: Joni Mitchell makes some hard choices...]

Exchanging freedom for security is one of the ongoing rites of adulthood. A job, a home, and a spouse are all milestones of growing up, but each entails the sacrifice of other choices. Joni Mitchell inherently understood this dilemma, and on Court & Spark she spoke for a whole generation of people who were coming of age and starting to make some tough decisions about where their individual futures were headed.

Released in January 1974, Court & Spark was an instant sensation that achieved ‘gold’ status (ie 500,000 sold) by February 27th, and spent more than a year on the album charts. Unlike Mitchell’s previous albums, which were instrumentally spare and lyrically bare, these songs are musically nuanced and emotionally complex. “So he buried the coins he made in People’s Park/And went looking for a woman to court and spark” she sings on the title track, cryptically summing up the sacrificial theme that runs through the entire album.

Every emotion expressed on Court & Spark comes with a toll. Mitchell sings of the price of love (’Help Me’), success (’Free Man In Paris’ - allegedly written for David Geffen), and friendship (’People’s Parties’), while happiness hangs forever just beyond her grasp. As Jon Landau perceptively noted in 1974, “Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction - always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it’s done.”

But it’s a great batch of songs that make this the best album of Mitchell’s career. After its tremendous success, she began to create progressively more challenging music that moved farther and farther from the AM dial. That the two discs of her career retrospective were titled ‘Hits’ and ‘Misses’ is proof of the adventurous, if sometimes befuddling, spirit of her musical quest. But on Court & Spark, and the following year’s The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, Mitchell struck the perfect balance of pop confection and existential dread.

Listen: Court & Spark

Tags: Court & Spark, Joni Mitchell, Masterpiece