After the 2017 release of her debut studio album Ctrl, American singer-songwriter SZA began appearing in soundtracks and collaborations with several artists.
[1][2] SZA told Wonderland magazine for their July cover story that working on new music had left her anxious, confused about the different facets of herself she could express with every song.
For the album, she said, she experimented with trap beats, acoustic sounds, and falsetto vocals, even taking inspiration from the music of folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.
[3] Earlier in February, she told Rolling Stone that a "trap song from the perspective of Joni Mitchell" had been created a month prior.
[6] Three months later, on August 22, an anonymous SoundCloud account with only a single period as its username uploaded three songs to the platform, one of them named "Joni".
[13] Influences from Mitchell and Smith, according to Pitchfork's Jill Mapes, manifest in the song's blend of "stinging realism" with a "California dreamer" perspective.
[9] "Joni" also pays homage to SZA's family, with lines about how she misses her mother during the day's low tides[16] and is willing to recite "a host of loving words" to her father.
[13] Upon hearing the song, her mother Aubrey Rowe said that it was simultaneously "soothing and distrupting", with "rich variations in texture, tone, and tempos".
[24] While recording for Lana took place, the full version of "Joni" leaked online, prompting a response from SZA in a 2023 interview for Variety.