A pioneering figure of the singer-songwriter era, Joni Mitchell charted an interior world that felt bigger and more ambiguous—but every bit as real—as the one outside, rendering relationships and self-exploration with a candor, humor, and wisdom unheard of before her and rarely matched since. Despite properly launching her solo career during the late ’60s in a decidedly antiestablishment folk scene, Mitchell (born Roberta Joan Anderson in 1943, in Fort Macleod, Canada) harbored a vocal skepticism toward the counterculture, an iconoclasm and commitment to her muse that followed her for decades—be it forays into jazz (including collaborations with Charles Mingus and Jaco Pastorius) or occasional retreats into poetry and painting. Delicate as it is, her work is quietly transgressive, crossing freely between folk (“Both Sides, Now,” “A Case of You”), pop (“Big Yellow Taxi,” “Chelsea Morning”), and jazz (“Blue,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”) without flaunting it, juxtaposing her fluttery voice with tough advice and a sharp, sometimes unsparing wit. But at the heart of Mitchell’s music lies that quest for the inner realm—a “feminine appetite for intimacy” (her words) that has influenced artists such as Prince and Kate Bush, as well as the more diaristic side of Taylor Swift.