Blue (Joni Mitchell song)

"Blue"
Song by Joni Mitchell
from the album Blue
Released1971
GenreFolk rock
Length3:00
LabelReprise
Songwriter(s)Joni Mitchell
Producer(s)Joni Mitchell

"Blue" is the title song from Joni Mitchell's 1971 album of the same name. The song is generally thought to be about James Taylor, with the line "Here is a song for you" being directed to Taylor. As Sheila Weller states in the biography Girls Like Us, "Its references to a drug addict's 'needles' and...proffering a seashell to her lover...make it fairly clear that 'Blue' is about James".[1]

The lines "acid, booze and ass, needles guns and grass, lots of laughs" from "Blue" were sampled for a bonus track titled "Song 4 U" on Mac Dre's The Genie of the Lamp album. The song is sampled on the track "My World Is..", from Blu and Exile's 2007 album Below the Heavens. The track is also sampled on "Catch My Drift", a 1989 song by the British group A.R. Kane.

"Blue" also appears in an important scene in the critically acclaimed 2019 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. The director, Joe Talbot, was unable to secure permissions for Mac Dre's "Song 4 U" but was able to get needle-drop rights to Mitchell's original recording.[2]

  1. ^ Weller, Sheila (2008). Girls like us : Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--and the journey of a generation. New York. ISBN 978-0-7434-9147-1. OCLC 166373130.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ^ "Joni Mitchell Library - Blue @ 50: Joni Mitchell's Music in Film: Film Experience, June 18, 2021". jonimitchell.com. Retrieved 2022-02-09.