“Down To You” by Joni Mitchell

"Down to You" turns up on Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell's 1974 album on Asylum, and it opens with Mitchell alone at the piano before the song widens out. She wrote it, co-produced it with Henry Lewy and arranged it with Tom Scott, with Larry Carlton on electric guitar, Joe Sample on clavinet, John Guerin on drums and percussion, and David Crosby and Susan Webb on backing vocals.

It picks over what's left after a one-night stand, the verses musing on the big picture and the bridge getting down to particulars, and it lands on a hard choice: change your life or own it. Music professor Lloyd Whitesell heard a wry meditation on how love and moral certainty both slip away. The song won the Grammy for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s).

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