Joni Mitchell performing at the Gershwin Prize concert, DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., 1 March 2023. Shawn Miller / Library of Congress. Image source
The date matters rather a lot with “Both Sides Now”. Ask for the Joni Mitchell version and there’s still a small administrative question to settle: 1969 or 2000?
Her recording on Clouds belongs to 1969. In 2000, she returned to the song on the album Both Sides Now, with an orchestral arrangement by Vince Mendoza. Same songwriter, same song, a very different setting.
It would be easy to make the comparison into a neat story about youth and wisdom. Too neat, perhaps. The early song already knows that your understanding of things can turn out to be incomplete. Mitchell hadn’t saved all the difficult thoughts for a more suitably mature birthday.
What changes is how much time the later performance seems to allow them. The orchestration gives the phrases space and weight. A line can arrive, hang there, and refuse to hurry along to the next one. There’s room for the doubt that was in the writing all along.
And the earlier recording doesn’t become a rough draft just because the later one exists. Both are finished works. It seems a pity to pick a definitive version and retire the other when listening to them together offers this much to notice.
