Shine (Joni Mitchell album)

Shine
Studio album by Joni Mitchell
Released September 25, 2007
Recorded 2006–2007
Genre Jazz, pop, adult alternative
Length 46:57
Label Hear Music, Universal
Producer Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell chronology
Songs of a Prairie Girl
(2005)
Shine
(2007)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
About.com[2]
BBC(highly positive)[3]
Entertainment Weekly(A-)[4]
Rolling Stone[5]
Q (November 2007, p.140)
PopMatters(8/10)[6]
Los Angeles Times[7]
The Guardian[8]
Mojo[9]
The Observer[10]

Shine is the nineteenth and final studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell and was released on September 25, 2007 by Starbucks' Hear Music. It is the singer-songwriter's first album of new songs in nine years (1998's Taming the Tiger).

Joni Mitchell, who had said she was retiring from music several years previously, signed a two-album contract with Starbucks' Hear Music that began with the release of Shine. The 10-track CD "feels like the return of Joni the storyteller," said Ken Lombard, the president of Starbucks Entertainment who also oversees Hear Music.

In the United States, the album sold about 40,000 copies in its first week, debuting at number 14 on the Billboard 200 chart;[11] this was Mitchell's best peak position in America since 1976's Hejira. Shine also peaked at #36 in the UK charts, making it Mitchell's first Top 40 album in the UK since 1991. In its first week on sale, Shine sold around 60,000 copies worldwide and as of December 2007, it has sold over 170,000 copies in the U.S.A.[12]

Background

In 2002, Joni Mitchell famously left the music business. The public first learned that she had returned to writing and recording in October 2006, when she spoke to The Ottawa Citizen. In an interview with the newspaper, Mitchell "revealed she's recording her first collection of new songs in nearly a decade" but gave few other details.[13]

Four months later, in an interview with The New York Times, Mitchell said that the album was inspired by the war in Iraq and "something her grandson had said while listening to family fighting: 'Bad dreams are good—in the great plan.'"[14]

The Sunday Times wrote in February 2007 that the album has "a minimal feel, a sparseness that harks back to her early work," adding that "rest and some good healers" had restored much of the singer's vocal power.[15] Mitchell herself described Shine as "as serious a work as I've ever done."[15]

The album was launched at the Sunshine Theater on Houston Street, New York City, on September 25, 2007, with a film of the Alberta Ballet performing The Fiddle and the Drum, a ballet devised by choreographer Jean Grand-Maître in collaboration with Mitchell that had premiered in Calgary on February 8 that year. The ballet uses a selection of Mitchell's songs, including "If I Had a Heart" and "If" from Shine, along with images from her art installation Flag Dance, which are projected as a backdrop.[16] The album cover features a scene from The Fiddle and the Drum.

Shine is only the second Joni Mitchell album never to have been distributed by Warner Music Group, the first being Night Ride Home, which was released by Geffen Records after the company was sold to MCA.

Track listing

  1. "One Week Last Summer" – 4:59
  2. "This Place" – 3:54
    • In a recent interview, Mitchell referred to a "second guitar song [inspired when] they decided to whittle down this mountain behind my sanctuary and sell it to California as gravel for McMansions."[17]
  3. "If I Had a Heart" – 4:04
    • "If I Had a Heart, I'd Cry" is a reaction to the state of the environment and what Mitchell called the current "holy war." In February 2007, The New York Times described the song as "one of the most haunting melodies she has ever written." Of the impetus that inspired her to write the song, Mitchell explained, "My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. I can't cry about it. In a way I'm inoculated. I've suffered this pain for so long. …The West has packed the whole world on a runaway train. We are on the road to extincting ourselves as a species."[14]
  4. "Hana" – 3:43
  5. "Bad Dreams" – 5:41
    • "Bad Dreams" was inspired by a comment Mitchell's grandson made at the age of three: "Bad dreams are good, in the great plan." In a March 2007 BBC Radio 2 interview with Amanda Ghost, the singer jokingly said she'd promised to "cut him in" on the song's profits.[18]
    • "Bad Dreams Are Good" lyrics appeared as a poem in The New Yorker, September 17, 2007.[19]
  6. "Big Yellow Taxi (2007)" – 2:47
    • In March 2007, The Guardian reported that Shine will feature a "new version" of Mitchell's 1970 environmentally-themed hit single.[20]
  7. "Night of the Iguana" – 4:38
  8. "Strong and Wrong" – 4:04
  9. "Shine" – 7:29
  10. "If" – 5:32

Personnel

Charts

Chart (2007) Peak
position
Australian Albums Chart 71
Canadian Albums Chart 13
Dutch Albums Chart 44
European Top 100 Albums 56
French Albums Chart 103
Irish Albums Chart 59
Italian Albums Chart 30
Norwegian Albums Chart 10
Swedish Albums Chart 25
Swiss Albums Chart 100
UK Albums Chart 36
US Billboard 200[22] 14

References

  1. Jurek, T. (2011). "Shine - Joni Mitchell | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  2. Ruehl, Kim (2011). "Joni Mitchell - CD Review of Joni Mitchell Shine". folkmusic.about.com. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  3. Lusk, John (2011). "BBC - Music - Review of Joni Mitchell - Shine". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  4. Collis, C. (2011). "Shine | Music Review | Entertainment Weekly". web.archive.org. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  5. Christgau, R. (2011). "Joni Mitchell: Shine : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone". web.archive.org. Archived from the original on January 25, 2009. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  6. Layman, Will (2011). "Joni Mitchell: Shine < PopMatters". popmatters.com. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  7. Powers, Ann (2011). "Mitchell, at home and in homage - Los Angeles Times". articles.latimes.com. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  8. Petridis, Alexis (2011). "CD: Joni Mitchell, Shine | Music | The Guardian". web.archive.org. Archived from the original on April 22, 2010. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  9. "Joni Mitchell: Shine (2007): Reviews". web.archive.org. 2011. Archived from the original on January 26, 2009. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  10. Spencer, Neil (2011). "CD: Joni Mitchell, Shine | OMM | The Observer". web.archive.org. Archived from the original on December 12, 2007. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  11. Katie Hasty, "Rascal Flatts Races To No. 1 In Debut-Heavy Week", Billboard.com, October 3, 2007.
  12. Keith Caulfield, "Ask Billboard: IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHART-MAS", Billboard.com, December 21, 2007.
  13. Fischer, Doug (2006-10-08). "The trouble she's seen: Doug Fischer talks to Joni Mitchell about her seminal album, Hejira". The Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
  14. 1 2 Yaffe, David (2007-02-04). "DANCE: Working Three Shifts, And Outrage Overtime". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
  15. 1 2 Eggar, Robin (2007-02-11). "The Renaissance Woman" (reprint). Sunday Times. Retrieved 2012-02-29.
  16. David Yaffe, "Working Three Shifts, and Outrage Overtime," New York Times, February 4, 2007. Retrieved March 5, 2015. The ballet was not performed in the U.S. until February 2010, three years after its Canadian premiere, when it was praised in Seattle but panned in Los Angeles.
  17. Eggar, Robin (April 2007). "Both Sides Now" (reprint). Word. Retrieved 2012-02-29.
  18. Come In From the Cold: The Return of Joni Mitchell, BBC Radio 2 programme, 2007-03-20.
  19. , New Yorker, 2007-09-17.
  20. Sexton, Paul (2007-03-19). "Captive on the carousel of time" (reprint). The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-02-29.
  21. Gill, Alexandra (2007-02-17). "Joni Mitchell in person" (reprint). Toronto Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2012-02-29.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.