How will the Grammys categorize Joni Mitchell’s At Newport, a reside recording of the singer/songwriter’s heartening return to the stage on the 2022 Newport Folks Competition? The album is about for launch by Rhino Information on Friday (July 28).
Mitchell is Grammy royalty, with 9 aggressive awards, plus a lifetime achievement award in 2002. She was additionally the MusiCares particular person of the yr in 2022.
The efficiency capped a exceptional restoration from a life-threatening aneurysm Mitchell suffered in 2015. Mitchell was backed on the reside occasion by different main Grammy winners comparable to Brandi Carlile, Marcus Mumford and Wynonna Judd, in addition to Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig from Lucius.
The massive query is whether or not the Grammys will classify the album as people, pop or conventional pop. Mitchell has received in all three fields through the years.
Mitchell landed her first Grammy nomination (and win) in a people class — greatest people efficiency for her sophomore album, Clouds (1969) — however she hasn’t been nominated in a people class since. Turbulent Indigo (1995) received for greatest pop album. Each Sides Now (2000) received for greatest conventional pop vocal album. This new album is more likely to be slotted in a kind of two classes. (If it does effectively, it could even have a shot at an album of the yr nomination.)
By way of genre-specific efficiency classes, Mitchell has normally been slotted as pop. Mitchell was nominated for greatest pop vocal, efficiency, feminine 4 occasions – for Courtroom and Spark (1974), The Hissing of Summer time Lawns (1976), Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm (1988) and the title monitor from Each Sides Now. She received pop instrumental efficiency for “One Week Last Summer,” a monitor from her 2007 album Shine.
The standard pop class was usually reserved for collections of songs from the Nice American Songbook, from its inception in 1991 till pretty just lately. But it surely has taken a broader view in recent times. The present guidelines state: “This category is for performances of a type and style of song that cannot properly be intermingled with present forms of pop music. This includes older forms of traditional pop such as the Great American Songbook, as well as cabaret/musical theater-style songs and previous forms of contemporary pop. This would also include contemporary pop songs performed in traditional pop style – the term ‘traditional’ being a reference, equally, to the style of the composition, vocal styling and the instrumental arrangement, without regard to the age of the material.”
Remaining placements are decided by a big screening committee that listens to the file and is charged with making the dedication primarily based on the sound of the music, not the artist’s picture or the place the album landed on varied charts or (on this case) the truth that it was recorded at a pageant related to a particular style.
Mitchell will flip 80 on Nov. 7, three days earlier than the 66th annual Grammy Award nominations are introduced on Nov. 10. The awards shall be introduced at Crypto.com Enviornment on Feb. 4, 2024.
This was Mitchell’s third time performing on the Newport Folks Competition, following appearances in 1967 (the place she met Leonard Cohen) and 1969 (the place she met one other lifelong good friend and collaborator, James Taylor).
The album options reside performances of such classics as “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Carey,” “Help Me,” “A Case of You” and “Both Sides Now.” Mitchell closed her set with “The Circle Game,” which she carried out on the Newport Folks Competition in 1967.
Mitchell wrote the entire songs on the album besides “Summertime,” the Porgy & Bess basic that was written by George & Ira Gershwin and DeBose Heyward.
Music journalist-turned-filmmaker Cameron Crowe wrote the album’s liner notes, which might deliver him his second nod for greatest album notes. He was nominated in 1986 for writing the notes for Bob Dylan’s Biograph.
