<<That's wrong, most of Joni's songs are single pieces of music of 3 to 5 minutes in
duration. For technical and financial reasons they are packaged in the form of albums.
Refuge Of The Roads stands up for me as
one the best songs I've ever heard regardless of whether it's packaged with songs of a
similar theme or not.>>
Philip, Joni has NEVER been a "singles" artist, driven by the considerations you
describe. You mentioned Motown earlier, and those *were* singles artists, who'd cut a
"hit" and then produce some extra baggage to put out an album. Even then, there were
some real gems on some of those albums - check out Stevie Wonder's "God Bless the
Child"...but I digress.
Joni has always worked in terms of stylistic projects, not producing albums that were
collections of unrelated songs. She even subtitled her first record to reinforce the
thematic nature of it. Why wasn't her first record a collection of her best-known
songs? That would have been the norm of the times, but Joni has always been outside
the norm.
Clouds and LOTC were more "song collections" than album projects, but I would say that
from Blue forward, she worked in terms of "projects" and not singles. Of course, the
record company released singles, because they wanted to catch every market they could,
but to hear Joni tell it she was never about 'technical and financial' considerations,
she was just corralled into those restraints by the business of the times.
I would also submit that Joni is not concerned with song length. If she can tell her
tale in 3 to 5 minutes, fine, but if she requires a larger canvas, she doesn't
hesitate to use it.
Bob
NP: Joni, "Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire"
