February 6, 2024

If you’re a music critic for the Washington Post, you should know something about music.

Describing Joni Mitchell’s Grammy performance (in an article credited to four writers), they claim: “We’re still fixated on Joni Mitchell’s final, artfully sour discordant note on ‘Both Sides Now’ followed by her sweet, wide grin…”

As if being “fixated on a note” weren’t weird enough, the note wasn’t “sour” (or “artfully sour”) or “discordant”. The song is in C. When she sings “I really don’t know life at all,” she briefly slides to what sounds like an A minor (on the word “all”) before the band resolves back to C major to close the song. This is a common chord change — going to the relative minor. It was nothing other than a passing note with a kind of jazz phrasing. That’s how she’s sung the song for the past few decades.

At 80 years old, Joni’s voice obviously isn’t what it once was. She has suffered deficits from her 2015 brain aneurysm; her speech can be halting. But her singing was moving, deliberate, and on pitch. The Post’s comment comes off as patronizing and stupidly smug. I don’t know for a fact, but I bet Chris Richards wrote it. His style is frequently affected and cringe inducing.

Photo: Copyright ©Emma McIntyre/Getty Images 2024