There are songs that come around every so often that are so emotional, they stop us dead in our tracks. I cannot tell you how many times my playlist has done me dirty on the drive to work. But in the lexicon of emotional songs, there are a few that are just complete gut-wrenchers, and without a doubt, Joni Mitchell‘s “Little Green” is one of them.
According to Far Out Magazine, Mitchell’s 1971 track is among one of the “most devastating folk songs” of all time, “beaten” out only by Nick Drake‘s “Black Eyed Dog.” Mitchell wrote the tune at the height of her fame for her highly lauded Blue album, and used it to reflect on a particularly harrowing point in her life.
Related: Brandi Carlile Plays Hard-Rock Cover of ‘90s Legend’s Powerful Hit, With Fans Calling It a ‘Face-Melter’
The Lore Behind “Little Green”
The song takes listeners back to 1965, when Mitchell’s songwriting career was not as lucrative and life wasn’t as promising. Mitchell was left in a boarding house by her boyfriend, pregnant and alone.
She had her daughter and named her Kelly Dale Anderson—which, according to American Songwriter, was inspired by a verdant shade of green—in February 1965. Being an unwed young mother in a time when that carried immense societal stigma, she ended up marrying fellow folk singer Chuck Mitchell out of convenience. While the pair raised Anderson for six months, they were soon divorced, and Mitchell made the painful decision to place her daughter up for adoption.
It would be 32 years before the two were reunited, after both Mitchell and Anderson (renamed Kilauren Gibb by her adoptive parents, David and Ida Gibb) began looking for each other. Her “Little Green” called Mitchell’s agent when she found out who her biological mother was, and the two finally met.
“I’ve had pain and joy in my life, but nothing like this. It’s an unparalleled emotional feeling,” Mitchell said of the reunion, according to her website.
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The Reimagination of “Little Green”
It would be long after the events of 1965 and the reunion that the song would see another life through the talents of Brandi Carlile. In 2017, Carlile covered Mitchell’s entire Blue album in concert and earned rave reviews for her performance.
Admittedly, Carlile wasn’t a fan of the folk legend at first. An illuminating story in the Los Angeles Times previewing the show brought that to light.
“I was mortified that the headline said [something] like ‘Non-believer learns to love Joni Mitchell.’ What the hell? [But] you know what, it’s honestly true,” Carlile reportedly confessed during the show. “T Bone Burnett played Blue for me in about 2005, and I was a young girl, and I wanted to spit and swear and cuss. And I still do all that. But I didn’t understand how much toughness there was in femininity.”
It was meeting her wife-to-be, Catherine Shepherd, that helped her see the error of her ways.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t love Joni Mitchell.’ And Catherine’s like, ‘Why the hell not?’ I said, ‘Because I don’t like the lyric “I want to renew you, I want to shampoo you.” It bothers me; it’s really heterosexual. She doesn’t sound tough.'”
It was then that Shepherd explained the deep and powerful meaning behind “Little Green,” and it shifted Carlile’s entire perspective.
“It changed my life. It didn’t just change the way I view music. It changed the way I view women, and what tough means. So, when I delved into Blue, I made up for lost time. As you can see, I’m an obsessive person,” she said. “And now,” Carlile added, “I love the lyric ‘I want to renew you, I want to shampoo you.’ I don’t think I’d ever really had anybody shampoo me at that point in my life. I needed a little bit of falling in love.”
Carlile ended up forming an extremely close bond with Mitchell and even convinced her to take the stage at the Newport Folk Festival after years of avoiding it.
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