The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. The first track, "In France They Kiss on Main Street", is a jazz-rock song about coming of age in a small town in the 1950s rock & roll era. (The song was released as the single from the album and reached number 66 on the Billboard charts.) "The Jungle Line" uses a field recording from Africa of the Drummers of Burundi (mistakenly called 'warrior drums' in the credits), onto which are dubbed guitar, Moog synthesizer and the vocal line. The lyrics pay homage to the works of the French Post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau. Mitchell blends details of his works with imagery of modern city life, the music industry and the underground drug culture. "Edith and the Kingpin" marks a return to jazz in a story of a gangster's new moll arriving in his home town. "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" is an acoustic guitar-based song with stream-of-consciousness lyrics, focused on women standing up to male dominance and proclaiming their own existence as individuals. "Shades of Scarlett Conquering" is an orchestral based piece about a southern belle, implying though not exactly stating, the Scarlett O'Hara character from Gone With The Wind. The title track, "The Hissing of Summer Lawns", is about a woman who is treated as part of her husband's portfolio, with a central image of the lawn sprinklers hissing their disapproval of the materialistic culture of the houses. or perhaps the hiss of the snake that appears on the cover. "The Boho Dance" comments on people who feel that artists betray their artistic integrity for commercial success, with an ironic glance at those who said this of Mitchell herself. "Harry's House/Centerpiece" concerns a failing marriage and is based on the jazz standard, "Centerpiece", by Harry "Sweets" Edison and Jon Hendricks. "Sweet Bird" is a sparser acoustic track that is a slight return to Mitchell's so-called 'confessional' singer-songwriter style. Its lyrics indicate that it may also be a reference to Tennessee's William's Sweet Bird of Youth. (Mitchell was in her thirties when she recorded the album and may have been thinking that her sweet bird of youth had flown) The final track is "Shadows and Light", consisting of many overdubs of her voice and an ARP String Machine (credited as an ARP-Farfisa on the album sleeve). The African theme of "The Jungle Line" also features on the album sleeve, with an image of natives carrying a large snake (both were embossed on the original vinyl album cover). Both men and snake are superimposed on the Beverly Hills suburbs, with Mitchell's own house marked in blue (green for the UK issue) on the back cover.The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. The first track, "In France They Kiss on Main Street", is a jazz-rock song about coming of age in a small town in the 1950s rock & roll era. (The song was released as the single from the album and reached number 66 on the Billboard charts.) "The Jungle Line" uses a field recording from Africa of the Drummers of Burundi (mistakenly called 'warrior drums' in the credits), onto which are dubbed guitar, Moog synthesizer and the vocal line. The lyrics pay homage to the works of the French Post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau. Mitchell blends details of his works with imagery of modern city life, the music industry and the underground drug culture. "Edith and the Kingpin" marks a return to jazz in a story of a gangster's new moll arriving in his home town. "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" is an acoustic guitar-based song with stream-of-consciousness lyrics, focused on women standing up to male dominance and proclaiming their own existence as individuals. "Shades of Scarlett Conquering" is an orchestral based piece about a southern belle, implying though not exactly stating, the Scarlett O'Hara character from Gone With The Wind. The title track, "The Hissing of Summer Lawns", is about a woman who is treated as part of her husband's portfolio, with a central image of the lawn sprinklers hissing their disapproval of the materialistic culture of the houses. or perhaps the hiss of the snake that appears on the cover. "The Boho Dance" comments on people who feel that artists betray their artistic integrity for commercial success, with an ironic glance at those who said this of Mitchell herself. "Harry's House/Centerpiece" concerns a failing marriage and is based on the jazz standard, "Centerpiece", by Harry "Sweets" Edison and Jon Hendricks. "Sweet Bird" is a sparser acoustic track that is a slight return to Mitchell's so-called 'confessional' singer-songwriter style. Its lyrics indicate that it may also be a reference to Tennessee's William's Sweet Bird of Youth. (Mitchell was in her thirties when she recorded the album and may have been thinking that her sweet bird of youth had flown) The final track is "Shadows and Light", consisting of many overdubs of her voice and an ARP String Machine (credited as an ARP-Farfisa on the album sleeve). The African theme of "The Jungle Line" also features on the album sleeve, with an image of natives carrying a large snake (both were embossed on the original vinyl album cover). Both men and snake are superimposed on the Beverly Hills suburbs, with Mitchell's own house marked in blue (green for the UK issue) on the back cover.false2023-11-09 22:25:38The Hissing of Summer Lawns820132013-01-012013-01-0143Avant-Garde PopContemporary JazzFolk RockFolk PopJazzPopRockJazz Pop1114252112120bbc36b6d-744f-42eb-ab33-cc80c3cd944aa6de8ef9-b1a1-4756-97aa-481bbb8a4069169a1a7e-f91e-3b10-a136-d94eba6eee2e/media/data/media5/Music/Joni Mitchell/The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975)/folder.jpgJoni MitchellAlbumArtist/config/metadata/People/J/Joni Mitchell/folder.jpgJoni MitchellArtist/config/metadata/People/J/Joni Mitchell/folder.jpgJoni MitchellJoni MitchellRoberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her starkly personal lyrics and unconventional compositions which grew to incorporate pop and jazz elements. She has received many accolades, including ten Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever", and AllMusic has stated, "When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century".Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the nightclubs of Toronto. She moved to the United States and began touring in 1965. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", "The Circle Game") were recorded by other folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell helped define an era and a generation with popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock". Her 1971 album Blue is often cited as one of the best albums of all time; it was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition. In 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of the 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music". NPR ranked Blue number 1 on a 2017 list of Greatest Albums Made By Women.Mitchell began exploring more jazz-influenced ideas on 1974's Court and Spark, which featured the radio hits "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris" and became her best-selling album. Mitchell's vocal range began to shift from mezzo-soprano to that of a wide-ranging contralto around 1975. Her distinctive piano and open-tuned guitar compositions also grew more harmonically and rhythmically complex as she melded jazz with rock and roll, R&B, classical music and non-Western beats. 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. She later turned to pop and electronic music and engaged in political protest. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards in 2002.Mitchell produced or co-produced most of her albums and designed most of her own album covers, describing herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance". A critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th and last album of original songs in 2007. She would give occasional interviews and make appearances to speak on various causes over the next two decades, though the rupture of a brain aneurysm in 2015 led to a long period of recovery and therapy. A series of retrospective compilations were released over the time period, culminating in the Joni Mitchell Archives, a project to publish much of Joni's unreleased material from her long career. She returned to public appearances in 2021, accepting several awards in person, including a Kennedy Center Honor in 2021. She performed live for the first time in 9 years, with an unannounced appearance at the June 2022 Newport Folk Festival, and performed a headlining show in June 2023 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington State.