Music Talk: OFD Pick

Song: “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell (1969)

This week Old Fart Dad wouldn’t stop talking about Joni Mitchell. He tried to go so far as to tell me that her lyrics are better than Bob Dylan’s. Better than Bob Dylan’s. I was like, “OFD, please! Don’t even go there. Do you know me? If you want to convince anyone of that, it’s most certainly never going to be me.” Plus, apparently this girlie called out my man Bob back in 2010, saying he is a fake. So, I have to hate her a little for that.

She is good though. Girl can sing. And though I’ll never concede to the fact that her lyrics are better than Dylan’s (psh!), I will say this: Uh, yeah, they’re good. She knows folk. She tells a darn good story through song, and I really like this one because she wrote it while she was on a plane. She said she had been reading a book by Saul Bellow, in which the first few pages describe the author’s experience of looking out at clouds through an airplane window. Joni put down the book, looked at the clouds outside of her plane window and then wrote the song. Hell yeah to clouds as inspiration.