The title makes reference to Laurel Canyon, a center of popular music culture in Los Angeles during the 1960s, where Mitchell lived while she was writing the album.

The album is notable for its expansion of Mitchell's artistic vision and its varied song topics (ranging from the aesthetic weight of celebrity, to observation of the Woodstock generation, to the complexities of love).

[12] Of all of Mitchell's work, this album is the most related to her long-standing friendships and relationships with Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young (whose rock arrangement of "Woodstock" was one of their four radio hits in 1970).

Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1970, Robert Christgau found Ladies of the Canyon "superior to her previous work, richer lyrically and more compelling musically."

[14] Years later in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), he said that, despite the occasional "laughably high school" wordplay, Mitchell's reliance on piano suggests "a move from the open air to the drawing room ... that's reflected in richer, more sophisticated songs.

It has been used repeatedly to call attention to environmental injustices, as it makes reference to the use of DDT, the Foster Botanical Garden and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.