‘Hejira’: The Joni Mitchell album Thomas Dolby considers to be the greatest of all time
To name your pick for the greatest album of all time can be a daunting task. Many play it safe and stick to the classics – David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, or Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, or whichever Beatles record takes your fancy. Others go with more modern entries into the all-time greats – Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly or Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt-Cutters, for example. For Thomas Dolby, it’s a Joni Mitchell record that takes the title.
While audiences throw names into the ring for the honour, musicians are trying desperately to create a record deserving of it, and Dolby is no exception. The multi-talented musician and producer hopes that each album he works on is a worthy contender for the greatest of all time but, failing that, would be willing to concede the title to folk legend Mitchell.
During a conversation with Pop Matters, Dolby was asked to divulge his shout for the greatest album of all time, to which he responded, “The one I’m working on, A Map of the Floating City. How can I say anything else?” It’s a response that could be seen as self-important or overconfident, but it seems to be a goal for Dolby rather than an assertion.
“Every time I make an album I want it to be the greatest album, ever,” he explained. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that many musicians hope to attain. An imaginative and eccentric entry into the new wave genre which saw Dolby working with the likes of Mark Knopfler and Regina Spektor, A Map of the Floating City may have been a highlight of his own career but, unfortunately for Dolby, few others would hail it as the greatest album of all time.
Dolby’s other pick, however, is an opinion shared by music-makers and listeners alike. If he couldn’t pick one of his own records, the synthpop icon named Hejira by Joni Mitchell as the greatest album of all time. Countless others have shared their love for the record, including Heart’s Ann Wilson, and it’s a certified masterpiece.
Released in 1976, Hejira saw Mitchell delving further into her jazzier influences. Over the course of nine songs and almost an hour of gorgeous music, we find Mitchell sitting in cafés and addressing Coyotes, her lyrics as poetic as ever, her voice ever-warm and wavering. They sit just above playful percussion and those soft strums that will be all too familiar to Michell enthusiasts.
The song spawned one single – opening track ‘Coyote’ – which is a breezy tale of chaotic love. “No regrets, Coyote,” Mitchell shrugs in the early moments of the song, “We just come from such different sets of circumstance”. Though she goes on to detail feelings of loneliness and being led on, the instrumentation stays just as airy and unconcerned as those opening words.
The rest of the album is just as gorgeous instrumentally but just as contemplative as Mitchell’s usual lyricism. Though the record can sometimes be overshadowed by relative giants Blue and Court and Spark, it’s no less deserving of Dolby’s admiration. It’s also a very worthy contender for the greatest album of all time, an impossibly consistent collage of Mitchell’s masterful lyricism and cosy accompaniment.
Listen to Hejira, the Joni Mitchell album Thomas Dolby calls the greatest of all time, below.