Hi Rand,

Great thread...

Time can make some songs timeless standards, while others age less fortunately, but usually a songs "meaning" remains fixed throughout time.

Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" is now over 40 years old. Originally it was a fast walking tempo piece of baroque pop, written in her early twenties, but seemed wise beyond its years,
her singing how she looked at life poetically:

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

Then more "realistically":

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way


...and she comes to see that it's clouds/life's/love's illusions that she recalls, and admits at the end of the last chorus "I really don't know life at all" and it's a forward look into
the beauty of possibility, with a full life ahead of her.

...and so we age with Joni, through her many styles and loves, and all the beautiful music along the way, and then in 2005, at the twilight of her recording career, she chooses to remake
"Both Sides Now" in a way that reflects who she's become: it's a slower jazzier walk, with a beautiful orchestral accompaniment, her voice an octave lower, full of cracks, wiser, more relaxed, well-within-itself...

...now...something unexpected happens when hearing these words 40 years later: it has become about her at the end of her career, and how, despite all the beauty shared and life lived and things learned, she can sing out that same line at the end, "I really don't know life at all"...and it is an achingly beautiful transcendent moment, for me. The song has become the "My Way" of a humble servant of life, love, and beauty...who realizes "the more you know, the more (you know) you DON'T know"..

...and it's also a new beginning for her, a full circle. Her youthful spirit is still pointed forward in this 2005 version, she stands before us proudly as someone who wants life's secrets, but wants life more.

Mike

Last edited by Michael Zaneski; 02/27/09 07:47 PM.
Fate doesn't hang on a wrong or right choice
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice

-The Divine Comedy (Neil Hannon)
from the song "Songs of Love"
from the album "Casanova" (1996)