Artist · chart history · #10 in indie & aaa artist polls
Joni Mitchell
Solo artist Fort Macleod Canada
Joni Mitchell is an artist from Fort Macleod. Joni Mitchell has 193 chart appearances on 32 radio countdowns from 12 stations on RockLists, spanning 1991–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “A Case Of You”, which appears on 18 lists with a best position of #15. The station that charted Joni Mitchell most often is WXPN (Philadelphia, PA), with 76 appearances.
Joni Mitchell paid her dues the old way, singing in the little nightclubs of Saskatoon and all over western Canada before working her way to Toronto's folk rooms, then crossing into the United States to tour in 1965. Other singers got to her songs first, "Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now" and "The Circle Game" among them, and those covers opened the door to a Reprise contract and her debut, Song to a Seagull, in 1968.
She settled in Southern California and started writing the songs that seemed to catch a whole generation mid-sentence. Clouds brought her own "Both Sides Now", and Ladies of the Canyon, in 1970, had "Big Yellow Taxi", bouncy and deceptively light on its feet, and the slow, spellbound "Woodstock". Then came Blue in 1971, the one that keeps turning up on lists of the greatest albums ever made. "A Case of You", "River", "All I Want", "Carey" and the title song are about as bare as records get: that pure, swooping voice, a few chords, and lyrics so personal they feel like reading somebody's diary over their shoulder. Her tools were a guitar in open tunings, the piano and the Appalachian dulcimer, and she made each of them sound like nobody else's.
She refused to stand still. Court and Spark, in 1974, leaned into jazz, gave her radio hits in "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris", and became her best-selling album. Around 1975 her voice dropped from a mezzo-soprano into a deep, roaming contralto, and her writing got knottier, harmonically and rhythmically, as she pulled jazz, R&B, classical music and rhythms from outside the Western tradition into the mix. Hejira, in 1976, with "Coyote" and "Amelia", sounds like a long drive through open country. From the mid-'70s she was working with serious jazz players, Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny among them, and Charles Mingus asked her to help with his final recordings.
She produced or co-produced most of her own albums and painted most of her own covers, a painter first by her own account, and never had much patience for the music business. She quit touring and put out her last album of original songs in 2007; a brain aneurysm in 2015 meant years of recovery. But she came back, collecting a Kennedy Center Honor in person in 2021 and walking unannounced onto the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in June 2022. Eleven Grammys, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1997 and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2002 barely cover it.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Joni Mitchell on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Case Of You | 18 | #15 | – | – | |
| 2 | River | 14 | #80 | – | – | |
| 3 | Big Yellow Taxi | 16 | #96 | – | – | |
| 4 | Coyote | 14 | #79 | – | – | |
| 5 | Both Sides Now | 12 | #52 | – | – | |
| 6 | Free Man in Paris | 12 | #116 | – | – | |
| 7 | Carey | 13 | #78 | – | – | |
| 8 | Help Me | 13 | #112 | – | – | |
| 9 | California | 10 | #40 | – | – | |
| 10 | Blue | 7 | #262 | – | – | |
| 11 | The Circle Game | 7 | #272 | – | – | |
| 12 | All I Want | 7 | #117 | – | – | |
| 13 | Woodstock | 6 | #226 | – | – | |
| 14 | Urge for Going | 4 | #309 | – | – | |
| 15 | Court and Spark | 6 | #295 | – | – | |
| 16 | Amelia | 4 | #263 | – | – | |
| 17 | Chelsea Morning | 4 | #180 | – | – | |
| 18 | You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio | 3 | #429 | – | – | |
| 19 | Song for Sharon | 3 | #528 | – | – | |
| 20 | Hejira | 4 | #693 | – | – | |
| 21 | Ladies Of The Canyon | 1 | #238 | – | – | |
| 22 | Raised on Robbery | 3 | #379 | – | – | |
| 23 | Down To You | 1 | #653 | – | – | |
| 24 | Don Juan's Reckless Daughter | 1 | #726 | – | – | |
| 25 | For Free | 1 | #1249 | – | – | |
| 26 | Black Crow | 1 | #549 | – | – | |
| 27 | Cactus Tree | 1 | #1470 | – | – | |
| 28 | Night Ride Home | 1 | #744 | – | – | |
| 29 | Last Time I Saw Richard | 1 | #760 | – | – | |
| 30 | Rainy Night House | 1 | #876 | – | – | |
| 31 | Conversation | 1 | #1825 | – | – | |
| 32 | Morning Morgantown | 1 | #1834 | – | – | |
| 33 | Clouds | 1 | #473 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
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