Hejira Tracklist
Hejira is a studio album recorded and released by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell in 1976. It was written based from her experiences on the road at the time and features a more jazz-based sound than her previous albums.
Though it didn’t as well as her previous albums in the United States, it was critically acclaimed and was placed on numerous lists for ‘The Greatest Albums Ever Made’ with media publications such as NPR and Rolling Stone. Additionally, it had some degree of success in the UK where it reached no. 11 on the albums chart and went Silver there, as well as Gold in the US and Australia.
“Hejira” Q&A
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What has the media said about the album?
NPR ranked the record as the #121 greatest album made by a female artist, saying:
There have been few artists who have evolved with as much artistic integrity and conviction as Joni Mitchell. Hejira (whose title, in short, means ‘journey’) was composed during a series of cross-country trips by Mitchell in 1975 and 1976. It’s an album inspired by solitude, using the highway as both metaphor and muse. As her sound started to incorporate more jazz influences, Mitchell recruited renowned jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius for the album — an ambitious move that paved the road for her work with other acclaimed jazz artists like Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Charles Mingus. The bass lines on Hejira weave in and out of its songs with minimal melodic repetition, much like her vocal parts; the combination paints the perfect backdrop to Mitchell’s deeply personal stories and observations. ‘I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs,’ Mitchell has said, ‘But I feel the songs on Hejira could only have come from me.’ While the lyrics tell tales of Mitchell’s past, the music hints at the musical journey she would take during the next 30 years of her career — a journey that has made Mitchell one of the most influential and universally beloved artists of all time.
