‘Blue’ is the fourth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released on June 22, 1971, by Reprise Records. Written and produced entirely by Mitchell, Blue captured the zeitgeist of the times with its poignant portrayal of disillusionment. Reading the news and it sure looks bad / They wont give peace a chance / That was just a dream some of us had, Mitchell sings in the opening verse to California. At the time she was writing these songs, the Edenic dream of the Woodstock generation was confronting grim realities: the reinstatement of the draft, the Kent State shootings, the revelations of the My Lai Massacre and COINTELPRO campaigns against Black activists. The way Mitchell renders just a dream some of us had makes clear shes a world away from the wonder of the carousel of life she sang about on The Circle Game just