Hits

Joni Mitchell is a songwriter, singer, musician, poet and painter. Her output of 19 albums over more than 25 years has created IMHO the most meaningful and consistent collection of work of any artist of her era. She's evolved from folk to pop to jazz to techno and back again, with touches of country and rock thrown in along the way, but in actuality none of these tags fit her, as she's always been marvelously unique and unclassifiable.

She's only had four bona fide Top-40 American hits, and one was a Miles of Aisles live version of "Big Yellow Taxi" that's not included here. But after almost 30 years, she's finally delivered a 15-song compilation of her signature songs that will be a CD point-of-departure for casual fans and newcomers well into the new millennium. The companion Misses volume is an intriguing curio that might rather more generously have been marketed as a bonus disc. --Jeff Bateman