The highlight of the set, however, was “Both Sides Now,” a song the 23-year-old Mitchell wrote in 1967, the same year she played Newport for the first time. At the time, some critics scoffed at the supposed wisdom of the lyrics: What could a 23-year-old know about both sides of life? But over the years, the song has revealed itself to contain infinite depths that have only been heard in later interpretations.
At 57, Mitchell re-recorded a lush version of “Both Sides Now” on his 2000 album of the same name, backed by a 70-piece orchestra. Her voice was deeper, elegiac and elegantly tired. “I remember the illusions of life,” she sang at the end of the song, “I really don’t know life at all.”
This version was considered jarring (and used to that effect in a classic scene from the movie Love Actually), but then again, it’s easy to find pathos in aging. Aging inherently brings suffering, exhaustion and loss – this is not news. What Mitchell’s performance of the song in 2022 confirmed is that it can also bring serendipity, long-delayed gratification and joy. Always an expert interpreter of his own material, Mitchell breathed new meaning into some of his most famous texts. “I could drink a can of you and I’d still be up,” she sang with Carlisle, the line becoming not just a challenge to a lover but a survivor’s boast to life itself.
Part of what’s so encouraging about Mitchell’s recent pop culture resurgence, like Bush’s surprising resurgence on the charts, is that it allows a beloved, if somewhat underrated, artist to receive her laurels while she’s still alive. (Winona Judd, still grieving the death of her mother Naomi, was also on stage with Mitchell and wept openly during “Both Sides Now” — a visual reminder of a crueler fate and the song’s inherent dichotomy.) In Culture , which overly views women as the old or simply renders them invisible and erases their influence, it felt like a quietly radical act to honor Mitchell in this way. Younger artists were given the chance to pay heartfelt tribute to their elders; a mature woman who had not yet finished rethinking her life’s work returned to the scene.
Surrounded by an adoring crowd of friends, fellow musicians and admirers—many of whom weren’t even born when Mitchell wrote “Both Sides Now”—she seemed to sing it this time with a grinning shrug: I really don’t know life at all. As if to say: You never know – anything can happen. Even that.
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