Rolling Stone named her "one of the greatest songwriters ever",[2] and AllMusic has stated, "Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century.

Starting in the mid-1970s, she began working with noted jazz musicians including Jaco Pastorius, Tom Scott, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny as well as Charles Mingus, who asked her to collaborate on his final recordings.

[45] A few weeks after the birth of her daughter, Mitchell was playing gigs again around Yorkville, often with a friend, Vicky Taylor, and was beginning to sing original material for the first time, written with her unique open tunings.

The album also included the already-familiar song "The Circle Game" and the environmental anthem "Big Yellow Taxi", with its famous line, "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

She made a decision to stop touring for a year and just write and paint, yet she was still voted "Top Female Performer" for 1970 by Melody Maker, a leading UK pop music magazine.

Simpler, rhythmic acoustic parts allowed a focus on Mitchell's voice and emotions ("All I Want", "A Case of You"), while others such as "Blue", "River" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" were sung to her rolling piano accompaniment.

While recording Court and Spark, Mitchell had tried to make a clean break with her earlier folk sound, producing the album herself and employing jazz/pop fusion band the L.A. Express as what she called her first real backing group.

"In France They Kiss on Main Street" continued the lush pop sounds of Court and Spark, and efforts such as the title song and "Edith and the Kingpin" chronicled the underbelly of suburban lives in Southern California.

She invited Pastorius back, and he brought with him fellow members of jazz fusion pioneers Weather Report, including drummer Don Alias and saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

Layered, atmospheric compositions such as "Overture/Cotton Avenue" featured more improvisatory collaboration, while "Paprika Plains" was a 16-minute epic that stretched the boundaries of pop, owing more to Mitchell's memories of childhood in Canada and her study of classical music.

[67] A few months after the release of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mitchell was contacted by the esteemed jazz composer, bandleader and bassist Charles Mingus, who had heard the orchestrated song "Paprika Plains", and wanted her to work with him.

Mitchell's tour to promote Mingus began in August 1979 in Oklahoma City and concluded six weeks later with five shows at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre and one at the Santa Barbara County Bowl, where she recorded and filmed the concert.

When the tour ended she began a year of work, turning the tapes from the Santa Barbara County Bowl show into a two-album set and a concert film, both to be called Shadows and Light.

She also collaborated with artists including Willie Nelson, Billy Idol, Wendy & Lisa, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Peter Gabriel, and Benjamin Orr of the Cars.

[60] Four months later, in an interview with The New York Times, Mitchell said that the forthcoming album, titled Shine, was inspired by the war in Iraq and "something her grandson had said while listening to family fighting: 'Bad dreams are good—in the great plan.

[85] In a 2013 interview with Jian Ghomeshi, she was asked about the comments and responded by denying that she had made the statement while mentioning the allegations of plagiarism that arose over the lyrics to Dylan's 2001 album Love and Theft in the general context of the flow and ebb of the creative process of artists.

In September 2018, Eagle Rock Entertainment released the Murray Lerner-directed documentary Both Sides Now: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970, which included restored video footage and previously unseen interviews with Mitchell, plus a separate program featuring the complete concert uninterrupted.

To celebrate her 75th birthday, artists Brandi Carlile, Emmylou Harris, James Taylor, Chaka Khan, Graham Nash, Seal, Kris Kristofferson, and others interpreted songs written by Mitchell.

"[115][116] British National Health Service doctor and author Rachel Clarke tweeted: "Both Neil Young & Joni Mitchell … know painfully well how much harm, suffering & avoidable death anti-vaxxers can cause.

[117][118][119] On July 24, 2022, Joni Mitchell appeared unannounced as a special guest in the closing performance of the final day of the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, where she had first played in 1967, as part of a set billed as "Brandi Carlile and Friends".

Brandi Carlile organized the sessions and recruited musicians, and among those who came over the years to play music and sing in Mitchell's living room were Elton John, Paul McCartney, Bonnie Raitt, Harry Styles, Chaka Khan, Marcus Mumford, Herbie Hancock,[124] Jess Wolfe, Holly Laessig, Taylor Goldsmith, Blake Mills, and Hozier.

On October 19, 2022, Carlile announced that Mitchell would play a headline concert, billed as "Joni Jam 2", in a weekend event at Washington State's Gorge Amphitheatre, "one of the most beautiful venues in the world", on June 10, 2023.

[130] She was celebrated with a concert on March 2 in Washington, D.C., where musicians taking part included Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox, Angélique Kidjo, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Cyndi Lauper, Graham Nash, James Taylor, Ledisi, Lucius, Marcus Mumford, Sara Bareilles and Celisse.

In 1995, Mitchell's friend Fred Walecki, proprietor of Westwood Music in Los Angeles, developed a solution to alleviate her continuing frustration with using multiple alternative tunings in live settings.

"River" has been one of the most popular songs covered in recent years, with versions by Dianne Reeves (1999), James Taylor (recorded for television in 2000, and for CD release in 2004), Allison Crowe (2004), Rachael Yamagata (2004), Aimee Mann (2005), and Sarah McLachlan (2006).

Other Mitchell covers include the famous "Woodstock" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Eva Cassidy, and Matthews Southern Comfort; "This Flight Tonight" by Nazareth; and well-known versions of "A Case of You" by Tori Amos, Michelle Branch, Jane Monheit, Prince, Diana Krall, James Blake, and Ana Moura.

Prince's version of "A Case of U" appeared on A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, a 2007 compilation released by Nonesuch Records, which also featured Björk ("The Boho Dance"), Caetano Veloso ("Dreamland"), Emmylou Harris ("The Magdalene Laundries"), Sufjan Stevens ("Free Man in Paris") and Cassandra Wilson ("For the Roses"), among others.

"Lavender" by Marillion was partly influenced by "going through parks listening to Joni Mitchell", according to vocalist and lyricist Fish,[160] and she was later mentioned in the lyrics of their song "Montreal" from Sounds That Can't Be Made.

"[145] A Perfect Circle, another band featuring Keenan as lead vocalist, recorded a rendition of Mitchell's "The Fiddle and the Drum" on their 2004 album eMOTIVe, a collection of anti-war cover songs.

Mitchell's songs were sung by many performers, including James Taylor, Elton John, Wynonna Judd, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Krall, and Richard Thompson.