Roberta Joan Anderson was born on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada.

As a teen she listened to rock-n-roll radio broadcasts out of Texas. She bought herself a baritone ukelele for $36 because she couldn’t afford a guitar.

“In a hundred years, when they ask who was the greatest songwriter of the era, it’s got to be her or Dylan. I think it’s her. And she’s a better musician than Bob.”~David Crosby

“She took the clay and moulded it in a way we hadn’t seen before. If you really sort of analyse songwriting at that time, male or female, what she was doing with her structures and her use of melody and her poetry and the voice too, you know that’s just one of the gifts that we’ve had.” ~Tori Amos

Sometimes change comes at you
like a broadside accident
There is chaos to the order
Random things you can’t prevent
There could be trouble around the corner
There could be beauty down the street
Synchronized like magic
Good friends you and me.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As ev’ry fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all.

As a child I spoke as a child–
I thought and I understood as a child–
But when I became a woman–
I put away childish things
And began to see through a glass darkly.
Where, as a child, I saw it face to face
Now, I only know it in part
Fractions in me
Of faith and hope and love
And of these great three
Love’s the greatest beauty…

You may know her as singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell.

Lyric excerpts taken from Ms. Mitchell’s website.