Legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell won her tenth lifetime Grammy at the 66th annual Grammy Awards, surprising the audience by appearing in person to accept the award at the pre-telecast ceremony on Feb. 4. She won Best Folk Album for Joni Mitchell at Newport (Live).
Mitchell, who will be making her debut Grammy performance at the primetime ceremony later tonight, drew a standing ovation when she appeared from backstage, accompanied by Brandi Carlile. "I don’t know what to say about this," the 80-year-old said. "We had so much fun at that concert, and I think you can feel it on the record. It's a very joyous record because of the people that I played with, and the spirit of the occasion was very high. Even the audience sounds like music."
Mitchell has only recently returned to live performance.
Mitchell's mere appearance at the ceremony was remarkable in and of itself. Just a few years ago, Mitchell was long presumed to have retired from live performance: she had only made a few sporadic live appearances after her final tour in 2000, and after suffering a traumatic brain aneurysm in 2015, it seemed especially unlikely that we would see ever her onstage again.
However, 2022 changed all that, when Mitchell made a surprise appearance with Brandi Carlile at the Newport Folk Festival, performing a dozen songs for a spellbound crowd -- that performance was recorded for her now-Grammy-winning live album. Mitchell and Carlile followed that up in 2023 with a full-scale, three-hour concert at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington, while Mitchell also made appearances at the Library of Congress and at the Gershwin Prize ceremony in her honor in Washington D.C. Just last week, Mitchell announced plans to deliver a headlining set at the Hollywood Bowl next fall.
Mitchell is scheduled to make her debut Grammy performance later tonight.
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One of the most beloved singer-songwriters of the 20th century, Mitchell has now won 10 Grammys, as well as a 2002 Lifetime Achievement honor and a MusiCares Person of the Year tribute. She won her first Grammy for Best Folk Performance for 1969’s Clouds, and boasts an Album of the Year trophy thanks to Herbie Hancock’s 2007 tribute album River: The Joni Letters, which features her songs, as well as a brief vocal contribution. She earned an Album of the Year nomination for her 1974 opus Court and Spark, though her consensus masterwork, 1971’s Blue — now widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time — went entirely unnoticed by the Grammys.
