The room › Artists › Joni Mitchell
Where to start with Joni Mitchell
Start with Harry's House Centerpiece — The Hissing of Summer Lawns, 1975. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 14 Joni Mitchell tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 14 Joni Mitchell tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 14 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The dates here run from 1974 to 2020. They are the dates attached to the releases in this room rather than recording dates, so the later ones are likely reissues — but 46 years is still more than one version of the artist.
Every track is filed under folk; nothing here crosses into another genre.
The head/body knob swings 47 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Harry's House Centerpiece — The Hissing of Summer Lawns, 1975. Of the 14 Joni Mitchell tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the cerebral end
Down To You — Court and Spark, 1974. The lowest head/body reading of any Joni Mitchell track in the room (25 out of 100). This is as far towards cerebral as the collection goes.
If you want the groove end
Both Sides Now — Both Sides Now, 2020. The highest head/body reading here, at 72 out of 100 — a 47-point swing across the collection towards groove.
Where Joni Mitchell sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Joni Mitchell's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Court and Spark | 1974 | 5 |
| The Hissing of Summer Lawns | 1975 | 3 |
| Hejira | 1976 | 1 |
| Mingus | 1979 | 1 |
| Taming The Tiger | 1998 | 1 |
| Don Juan's Reckless Daughter | 1977 | 1 |
| Both Sides Now | 2020 | 1 |
| Night Ride Home | 1991 | 1 |
Every Joni Mitchell track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Car on a Hill | Court and Spark | 1974 |
| Down To You | Court and Spark | 1974 |
| Free Man in Paris | Court and Spark | 1974 |
| Help Me | Court and Spark | 1974 |
| People's Parties | Court and Spark | 1974 |
| Harry's House Centerpiece | The Hissing of Summer Lawns | 1975 |
| In France They Kiss on Main Street | The Hissing of Summer Lawns | 1975 |
| Shades Of Scarlet Conquering | The Hissing of Summer Lawns | 1975 |
| Coyote | Hejira | 1976 |
| Dreamland | Don Juan's Reckless Daughter | 1977 |
| Sweet Sucker Dance | Mingus | 1979 |
| Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free) | Night Ride Home | 1991 |
| Love Puts on a New Face | Taming The Tiger | 1998 |
| Both Sides Now | Both Sides Now | 2020 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Joni Mitchell's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Vashti Bunyan — folk, 29 tracks
- Where to start with Haruomi Hosono — japanese pop, 66 tracks
- Where to start with Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes — jazz, 11 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Joni Mitchell as a solo artist, from Canada and born in 1943. Its contributors tag the artist rock, pop, jazz, folk and vocalist. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Joni Mitchell tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 14, across 8 albums. 14 of them carry a date, running from 1974 to 2020. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 14 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 14 of these 14 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.