Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, and the Torch Song Tradition (review)

This is the author's third book dedicated to the careers of popular songwriters; the previous two covered the work of Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. The book is structured as a dual life-and-works, with chapters on biography, artistic philosophy, oeuvre, and individual close readings for each musician. Smith contributes no new biographical research, being content to collate and repackage the extensive material already available in biographies and music journalism. The result offers an interesting comprehensiveness for those unfamiliar with the existing literature, but adds little of value. When Smith does venture an authorial comment, it generally suffers from an ill-judged tone, often cloying and overfamiliar, occasionally crackpot. Here, for instance, is a sample from his concluding paragraph in the chapter on Mitchell's oeuvre: 'Joni Mitchell's Smithville [her hypothesized iconic community] is in Mesopotamia. It is the Garden of Eden—a place where every morning is a butterscotch morning . . . and every night is peaceful, comfortable, and horribly romantic . . . . Health foods, nature walks, skinny-dipping, and other wonderful, natural treats are readily available—and you may smoke in public, if you like . . . . People cooperate with each other, share responsibilities and duties, and pass along life's wisdom in informal settings' (p. 99).

The chapters surveying the bodies of work make their way painstakingly through every single album. An attempt is made to divide the careers into distinct subperiods, but the criteria for such a division remain rather impressionistic. Thus Mitchell's work falls into a 'participant-commentator' phase (1968–74), a 'sonic explorer' phase (1975–9), and a 'seasoned commentator' phase (1982–98); Costello's into a 'Citizen Elvis' period (1977–81), a 'punk tunesmith' era (1982-4), and a 'punk composer' phase (1986 to the present). Again, tone is a constant problem. Discussing Mitchell's 'Chelsea Morning', Smith calls the song 'an aural smiley face' (p. 43). The level of discourse approximates to a lengthy, enthusiastic, but self-indulgent review posted on a music retail website.

Most damaging, however, to the usefulness of a book dedicated to the explication of a putative 'torch song' aesthetic is the almost total absence of any musical discussion. Smith's interpretations focus for the most part on recurring poetic themes and the construction of important images or personae. The lyrics thus loom large, though he neglects to take up any well-honed analytical tool from the field of poetic criticism. (His summary judgement of Mitchell's verbal skill is limited to the claim—don't blink or you'll miss it—that her 'intimate language . . . generates a personal tone that engages her audience', p. 260.) Instead he offers a classification according to 'narrative strategy'. Thus 'Mitchell uses just seven narrative strategies throughout her lifework. . . . She presents the many shades of her Earth Mother manifesto through portraits, complaints, celebrations, challenges, struggles, testimonials, and narrative impressionism' (p. 103). Such a parsing has merit, though it sheds no light on matters of musical style or significance.

Smith's bibliography lacks reference to pertinent entries from the academic branch of popular music studies, such as David Brackett's respected book Interpreting Popular Music (Cambridge, 1995; reviewed in Music & Letters, 77 (1996), 658–9), with its chapter on Costello, or my own analytical explorations of Mitchell's songs. He does refer, in his introduction, to outdated studies of the medieval troubadours in order to make spurious connections between their culture and ours ('Duke William of Aquitaine . . . may be the musical world's first rock-and-roll star', p. xiv). And nowhere does he satisfactorily explain how we are to understand the torch song tradition of his title or how the wide-ranging work of these two musical paragons is served by such a glib designation.