“Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell

"Both Sides Now" found its home on Joni Mitchell's Clouds in 1969, just Mitchell and her guitar, and it grew into one of the songs she is best known for. She has said it came to her in the air: she was reading Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King on a flight, reached a scene where the hero gazes down at clouds from his own plane, looked out her window at the real thing and began to write.

Mitchell tunes the guitar open, to D-A-D-F#-A-D, and the ringing chords hang in the air like weather while she sings with a wisdom that sounds far older than she has any right to. Rolling Stone later put it at 170 on its list of the 500 greatest songs, and she returned to it with an orchestra as the title song of her 2000 album Both Sides Now.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.