Listening to Joni Mitchell’s music is like stepping into a short story of sights, sounds, people, places and emotions that reel and weave around each melody and Ann Powers ‘Traveling’ is a marvelous companion. Although the author did not interview her subject for this book, make no mistake, she knows Ms Mitchell. The intimate understanding she has of each lyric, tuning and phrasing paints a stunning portrait. Powers analysis is far ranging with praise and criticism but always one of respect. It is a meditation on Mitchell’s life and art.
Admittedly, I am a Joni fan and was introduced through ‘Song to a Seagull’ when a friends brother brought the album with the colorful cover art the day it was released. Ann Powers book has shined another facet in the life, art and journey of Joni Mitchell and I am so glad to be along for the ride!
Thanks to NetGalley, Ann Powers and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice."

Powers tells us on the first page what to expect - not the usual biography, with a healthy dose of her own journey. Powers spent a decade on Traveling, and it's rich. Meticulously researched, with pages of notes referencing interviews she conducted, articles, prior works, and the music. A music writer and critic, Powers analyzes Mitchell's work in the context of its time, placing it firmly in the annals of music history.

She doesn't put Mitchell on a pedestal and she doesn't shy away from controversial subjects. What she does do is insert personal insight (as a woman, as a mother, as a wife etc.) to bring a closer inspection to her subject. Powers also seems to have conflicting feelings about the resurgence of Mitchell and her music post-aneurysm, discounting this version of the beloved Mitchell somewhat in comparison. Maybe conflicted that she was too beloved? I can't find fault with people discovering (and loving) Mitchell in this phase. We all get old.

I learned a lot and appreciated Traveling, especially reading about Mitchell navigating through the boys' world and establishing her own corner.

My thanks to NetGalley and Dey Street Books for the digital ARC. Traveling was published in June 2024.

As a Joni Mitchell fan, I was excited to read this. Unfortunately, the book has no idea what it wants to be. It's not a biography or a memoir; ultimately, it succeeds at neither.

Over the course of the book, Ann Powers keeps comparing herself to Joni Mitchell in an attempt to connect to the legend. Had they been valid comparisons, I wouldn't have mind. However, the connections she makes are tenuous at best. I couldn't take them seriously and found them distracting.

In addition, it was off-putting how Powers is constantly making jabs at Joni. I acknowledge that Joni Mitchell is a person with flaws and complexities and has made questionable choices. However, the way Powers looks down at her subject matter and her fans strikes me as unprofessional. She acts as if she's the only person capable of having correct and nuanced opinions on Joni, which is very condescending.

On top of that, I was flabbergasted by the way Powers accuses other Joni biographers of being easily influenced and are incapable of being objective. Considering she didn't even interview Joni, Powers has no ground to stand on. It's ironic that she makes those accusations yet continues referencing those biographers' work anyway.

While I enjoy some of the music analysis, I finished the book feeling like I've learned little about Joni or her music. Powers spends too much time making the book all about herself and veering into meaningless speculation to truly engage with Joni Mitchell's work in a meaningful way. Would not recommend.

Heads up, this isn't a straight biography, but I enjoyed (and actually prefer) all the analysis and contextual detours. I always found Joni’s genius a bit intimidating but I feel like I have a stronger footing to make a deep dive into her discography given how insightful, yet accessible, this book is.

This was a bit more of the author's feelings about Joni Mitchell than the standard biography, which I think some Mitchell fans will prefer, as they've probably read all the bios about her already. But I was hoping for something more standard. Still if you're a Mitchell fan, you will want to pick this up.

Thank you NetGalley, the author, Ann Power, and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, music writer Ann Powers takes an extended look at the life, work, and legacy of the first Joni who probably comes to mind you hear the name. Of course, there are already plenty of Joni interviews and biographies out there, so Powers takes care to carve out her own Joni niche. She does this in several ways.

First and foremost, she really focuses on the music itself. Album by album, Powers dives deep into the songs, the collaborators, and Joni’s ever evolving approaches to making music. The book also places Joni’s work into its broader social context, examining the attitudes, literature, and social changes that were happening around it. In addition, Powers distinguishes Traveling by offering a warts-and-all portrait of Mitchell and her work. In researching the book, she very pointedly did not talk to Mitchell. She did not seek her subject’s blessing, and that freed her up to do more than just love on Joni. It made it possible for her to discuss some of the problematic aspects of Mitchell and her music, too—for instance, repeated occurrences of racial insensitivity and cultural appropriation that Mitchell has never apologized for, or really even acknowledged.

Finally—and I think this is important for Joni fans to understand going into the book—Ann Powers takes a complicated critical stance toward Mitchell. Yes, she loves Joni—but because she’s younger than core fans who came of age with Mitchell’s music, it’s an acquired, less intense love. Yes, she thinks Joni blazed a trail for women in pop music—but she also recognizes how Mitchell sometimes threw other women under the bus and verbally disrespected younger artists. And yes, Powers has met Mitchell, but it was a strange, ambiguous encounter that she finds a little hard to sit with. Over the course of the book, Powers gradually teases out her own complex personal feelings toward both Joni the creator and Joni the person.

I struggled a little through the first half of Traveling. Like Ann Powers, I’m too young to be an original Joni fan, so I didn’t know every song discussed, or have the associated memories that add a layer of resonance to them. Lacking that real-life context, some of the musical discussion got a little too in-depth for my interest level. However, I enjoyed the book more as it went along, as Powers started to bring more of her own story and feelings into the exploration. The result is a completely distinctive look at Joni’s life and work—one that highlights the unique, textured connections we each feel to the artists we love listening to.

My thanks to NetGalley and Dey Street Books for providing me a copy of Traveling in exchange for my review.

I love listening to Ann Powers' take on music and culture on NPR and this book is just what I hoped it would be. I'm not a hardcore Joni stan, but I am fascinated by how she shaped music and culture over her lifetime. Powers writes beautifully about Joni, but also keeps her distance so she can thoughtfully cover her missteps. This is a must-read for all music fans!

An important look at not just Joni the artist and the intricacies of her work, but also her role for music fans over the years , especially feminist ones. I appreciated a lot of the subjects Powers grappled with here and left feeling quite enlightened and ready to dive into some Joni deep cuts I hadn’t heard in a while… 🎶

A thoughtful and reflective read on one of the most idolized singer songwriters to ever release music. I appreciated the work that Ann Powers' put into writing a fully realized portrait of Joni Mitchell, while also never trying to pin her down--simply because Joni Mitchell always seems to dance around categorization, defying anyone to canonize her as anything other than a genderless, genre-less genius.

This book makes you take your time--it brings in a lot of ideas, goes off on side roads and doesn't hold your hand about it. For the duration of my reading time I had Joni Mitchell's music on in the background, and I highly recommend doing that if you pick up this book. You hear the technical aspects in a new way, you engage with the lyrical content differently once you read Powers' historical framing of it, and it gave me a new appreciation for the music.

I also appreciated the fact that Powers does not let Joni Mitchell off the hook for her missteps, and takes the time to unpack the more (for lack of a better word) problematic aspects of Joni Mitchell. In the past I've been disappointed to see Joni Mitchell's thornier aspects glossed over, specifically her blackface on the Don Juan's Reckless Daughter album cover, and the use of that same character when she would don it for parties. I've seen the "the 1970s were a different time/her relationship with race is complicated" explanation too many times, and to have Powers address it, and bring in outside voices better suited to address it was a good thing. I cannot speak to whether or not it was enough to address the character of Art Nouveau, but it was more than I'd ever seen in the past.

"Complicated" feels like an easy out when it comes to talking about Joni Mitchell, but she's as human as the rest of us--people are complicated; our emotions and outbursts and relationships can become tangled. We can be vitriolic about the people we love, we can put others down in order to lift ourselves up, we can reject the community that fostered us from the beginning. But we can also be honest, friendly, funny, reaching out a hand with no expectation of reciprocity. Joni Mitchell is all of these things--she is a genius that has both shunned and welcomed idolization, and has been many different versions of herself over the decades we've shared with her and her music.

I won't dock any points for the typos, considering this is an arc, but I do wonder if certain passages will be reworked before official publication--specifically, the passages about Buffy Sainte-Marie. Prior to the Fall of 2023 I think these passages would be quite powerful, but post those headlines it does take you out of the book considering she is brought up in opposition to Joni Mitchell's privilege as a white singer-songwriter. There is also a passage about one of the more risqué lyrics in Coyote that loses some steam considering that, immediately after Powers' remarks on its power, the lyric in question is misquoted. Nitpicky, yes, but it did take me out of the book for a second.

But, overall, I really do recommend this book. It gave me much to think about in regard to Joni Mitchell, and made me interrogate my own relationship to her and her music.

This book does not attempt to define her, to cast her in bronze, immovable and unchangeable. It made me think about the version of Joni Mitchell I've been engaging with for years, the version of her that exists in my life, in my mind. The ways I've tried to define her, define my appreciation when others ask why I love her music so much, why her music matters. As Joni Mitchell herself once said: " If you hold sand too tightly in your hand, it will run through your fingers."

My thanks to NetGalley for the arc, and to Ann Powers for writing this thoughtful and in-depth book on Joni Mitchell.

I recieved this as an e-galley from NetGalley.

In a world of decreasing appreciation for music criticism and cultural writers- thank goodness for Ann Powers!

I have read a fair amount of biographical material on Joni Mitchell but where this book hit my sweet spot was the combination of biography, music criticism, and personal memoir that Powers wrote here.