THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL MUSICIANS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7

was as much a voice for the dispossessed as it was a biog-
raphy of Mingus.
Having proved that she could make commercially
successful albums and win critical acclaim, Mitchell
became a prestige artist. Moreover, because her songs had
become hits for others, she was a source of considerable
publishing revenue for her record companies. As a result,
they went along with her musical experiments. After
Mingus, however, Mitchell stood back a little from the pop
world. From the beginning of her career she had illustrated
her own album covers, so it was not surprising that in the
1980s she began to develop her visual art, undecided about
whether to concentrate more on painting or music.
Although not as prolific as in the 1960s and ’70s,
Mitchell continued to create penetrating, imaginative
music, from Dog Eat Dog (1985) to the more reflective
Night Ride Home (1991) and the Grammy Award-winning
Turbulent Indigo (1994). Having dealt with international
political and social issues such as Ethiopian famine on Dog
Eat Dog, she returned, by the early 1990s, to more personal
subject matter—singing about true love, for instance, on
Turbulent Indigo. One of the first women in modern rock
to achieve enviable longevity and critical recognition,
Mitchell has been a major inspiration to everyone from
Dylan and Prince to a later generation of female artists
such as Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morissette. Although she
regularly collaborated with producers and arrangers,—
Mitchell always had control over her material. Her songs
have been covered by a range of stars, including Dylan,
Fairport Convention, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, and
Crosby, Stills and Nash. Though unworried about pop
chart trends, in 1997 she enjoyed major success with a new,
young audience when Janet Jackson sampled from
Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi for the massive hit Got ’Til It’s