Abstract

Having a ‘soundtrack of our life’ has become an advertising cliché these days, but this paper will aim to critically reclaim this notion by examining my personal relationship with the early songs of Joni Mitchell. It will emphasize the cultural reach of these songs (and of West Coast pop in general) by considering their sonic and lyrical affect on the inner and outer life of a boy growing up on a new council estate in a Lincolnshire market town during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper will extend various theories on the social construction of space (for instance, Merleau-Ponty’s notion of how the body and its sensory-motor functions ‘commune’ with the things it encounters) by showing how my experiences and memories of that council estate environment were refracted through Chelsea Morning, Both Sides, Now and Big Yellow Taxi in particular. This paper will be unashamedly personal and lyrical in character, but it will also be underpinned by theories on autobiographical memory and child development to demonstrate how these songs have become conduits for recalling what it felt like to grow up on the estate, and for my meditations on place, memory and of loss.