This has been an exciting few months for Joni Mitchell. The folk icon’s beloved fourth album Blue turned 50 in 2021, her good friend Brandi Carlile is performing Blue at Carnegie Hall this fall, and now the Recording Academy has announced that Joni will be 2022’s MusiCares Person Of The Year.
According to Variety, Joni will be the honoree during the 31st annual Person Of The Year benefit gala, which will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on January 29, 2022, two nights before the 2022 Grammys. (For context, 2020’s Person Of The Year was Aerosmith, in 2019 it was Dolly Parton, in 2018 Fleetwood Mac, 2017 Tom Petty, and the list goes on.) “I’m honored to be chosen as person of the year by this great charity,” Mitchell said in a statement. “I look forward to being part of this gala that will help MusiCares continue their inspired work in providing a support system for those in need.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic first set in, MusiCares launched their COVID-19 Relief Fund, which was established to help music workers directly affected by event cancellations. The organization distributed more than $25 million in relief, and last June announced that it would be distributing a “final round” of funding.
As for Mitchell, the singer recently gave a rare interview to Cameron Crowe in the Los Angeles Times, where she talked about what Blue meant to her. “Like all of my albums, Blue came out of the chute with a whimper. It didn’t really take off until later. Now there’s a lot of fuss being made over it, but there wasn’t initially. The most feedback that I got was that I had gone too far and was exposing too much of myself. I couldn’t tell what I had created, really. The initial response I got was critical, mostly from the male singer-songwriters. It was kind of like [Bob] Dylan going electric. They were afraid. Is this contagious? Do we all have to get this honest now? That’s what the boys were telling me. ‘Save something of yourself, Joni. Nobody’s ever gonna cover these songs. They’re too personal.'”
