Listening Blog #13 – “Woodstock” – Joni Mitchell (1969)

Instrumentation: Voice (Mitchell and background), and some sort of synth/electric piano

Texture: The texture is that of melody (Mitchell) and accompaniment (the electric piano). The song begins with an electric piano solo, which immediately gives the song an unusual and hauntingly mysterious tone. When Mitchell joins the song, her voice has a similarly haunting, eerie quality to it. Together, the two instruments create a very bare but captivating sound.

Range: The electric piano remains in a stable “home” range, but throughout the song Mitchell sings very high. She also demonstrates a wide musical range, as she frequently jumps from a low register to a much higher register.

Tempo: While the beginning solo shows some artistic phrasing which makes it hard to initially determine the tempo, the piano sets the song’s tempo a couple of bars before Mitchell begins singing. One Mitchell begins singing, there is not very much variation in the tempo – the focus is mostly on her lyrics and melodic interpretation.

Meter: The song demonstrates duple beat, which is enforced by subdivision of the beat by the left hand of the electric piano accompaniment.

Volume: While at some points Mitchell sings more delicately at some points, and more recklessly at others, she does not actually vary that much in volume: she has good control over both her low and high registers, and as her voice has a sort of strident quality to it, it doesn’t need too much volume.

Form: The song clearly demonstrates strophic form, as evidenced by Mitchell’s verses and return to the chorus of “We are stardust / We are golden / And we’ve got to get ourselves / Back to the garden.”

Lyrics: Mitchell apparently wrote the lyrics to the song as she was sitting in a hotel watching broadcasts of the Woodstock Music Festival, as she had been advised to perform on TV instead of attending the festival. In her lyrics, Mitchell seems to blend religion and anti-war protest as she paints Woodstock as a gathering of those looking to “lose the smog” and gain redemption (she starts the song with “I came upon a child of God”, and returns to the ending chorus phrase “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden”, referencing Eden). In the last verse she says that she “dreamed [she] saw the bombers / Riding shotgun in the sky / And they were turning into butterflies”, showing her dream for peace and the end of military aggression. To Mitchell, Woodstock was much more than just a festival.

Personal Response: I noticed that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had recorded another version of the song. I felt that it was a huge departure from Mitchell’s version stylistically, but also lost a lot of the significance that Mitchell put into her song. Their version was much more upbeat, and so lost the serious tone and message that Mitchell conveyed in her song. In addition, I also wanted to address Mitchell’s vocal improv section after the last chorus: I found it extremely interesting to hear how she intentionally made her voice break in order to make it sound like a completely different instrument.