Iconic folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell boasts a catalog that seems to entirely consist of intergenerational anthems.
Her discography, revered for its heartfelt and candid storytelling, is timeless: Look no further than “Both Sides Now,” one of her best-known songs about the lessons of love and life, which she wrote when she was just 21 years old. Over the years, the one constant in all of her renditions of the song is that Mitchell still doesn’t have all the answers to the questions she sings about — and maybe never will. But there’s a kind of wisdom in that, and the song reveals new meanings each time she revisits it — most recently, when Mitchell, now 80 years old, performed it at the 2024 Grammys. As the song says, we really don’t know life at all — but it still comes full circle.
In a reflective mood at this stage in her introspective career, Mitchell will release The Asylum Albums (1976-1980) this summer, a five-disc box set of remastered albums from the Joni Mitchell Archives. So there’s no better time than now to listen to some of her greatest songs of the last 60 years — many of which have been used in shows and films to dramatize emotional moments and life transitions.
In the series finale of After Life, Ricky Gervais’ Tony looks at life from both sides. Throughout the show, he’s become numb to the world following the passing of his wife, Lisa (Kerry Godliman). As the series comes to a close, Tony recalls how Mitchell was his wife’s favorite artist — they danced to “Both Sides Now” at their wedding. A cover of the song plays at the very end of the episode as Tony finally begins to soften.
The holidays aren’t the same when the people you love are far away. That’s the premise of this episode, as Emma Green (Hilary Swank) is on a spacecraft en route to Mars and her husband, Matt (Josh Charles), and teenage daughter, Alexis (Talitha Bateman), are back home on Earth. Mitchell’s melancholy Christmas classic “River” provides the perfect backdrop — it’s a song about the pain of being apart from someone you love. This Christmas stings a little more for the family, after Emma and Matt have their last phone call before communication grows spotty in space. The sad sleigh bells of “River” play as Matt looks to the sky and Emma toward Earth, each longing for the other.
This thrilling limited series follows the investigation of an abducted man from the perspectives of the people connected to him. The whole situation gets a little murkier when reporter Ben Park (Abraham Lim) finds video footage of a woman, Sarah (Taylor Ferguson), who was secretly involved with Nick (Adrian Grenier), the missing man whose family is desperate to find him. The video shows Sarah sitting on her couch with her guitar playing Mitchell’s confessional love song “A Case of You.”
Mitchell’s deceptively upbeat “Big Yellow Taxi,” which became an anthem for the environmental movement, plays at the beginning of Episode 2 of this limited crime series. The car ride depicted in the show is grim like the one Mitchell sings about: Sisters Fatima (Ahd Kamel) and Mona Asif (July Namir), who are Syrian refugees in London, are transported in an immigration enforcement van to a detention facility following their brother’s murder.
This Christmas series uses “River” — perhaps the saddest Christmas song of all time — to connect protagonists Dash and Lily. In the first episode, Dash (Austin Abrams) finds Lily’s (Midori Francis) hidden journal at the Strand bookstore in New York. He follows the instructions written within to recite the song in front of the whole store. “Maybe you thought this would scare me off, but I love this song,” Dash, who hates Christmas, says in his head to the mystery girl. In the next episode, we see Lily and her brother creating the notebook treasure hunt, and she insists on including “River,” which plays in her headphones. Christmas is Lily’s favorite holiday, but this year she has to find new ways to celebrate after most of her family leaves town.
Carter (Tone Bell) is having a hard time working through wartime PTSD, and his friends are just trying to cheer him up. He’s hiding out in a room at the weed dispensary and, like many sad people have over the years, losing himself in Mitchell’s 1971 Blue record. As each of his friends attempts to check in with him through the door, Carter decides to drown them all out by playing “A Case of You.”
Best friends Tully (Katherine Heigl) and Kate (Sarah Chalke) have been through a lot together in Firefly Lane’s two seasons, and their relationship has seen its ups and downs since they first met as teens. So “Both Sides Now” is fitting for the sweet moment between the pair in Season 2 when Tully goes to visit Kate, who has Stage IV breast cancer. As Mitchell’s guitar strums, Kate pulls a shawl she made over Tully’s shoulders and tells her, “Guess I was knitting it for you all along.” Sob.
Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) and her childhood archnemesis Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) have come a long way in this Full House reunion series. In the Season 4 finale, the Tanners and the Gibblers gather together at the hospital as Kimmy, who agreed to be a surrogate for Stephanie, gives birth to her baby girl. Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” is the perfect song for this moment, as the two women have truly come full circle.
Perhaps the best way to listen to one of Mitchell’s songs in a series or movie is to watch the legend herself pick up a guitar and play it. In a vintage clip resurfaced in Martin Scorsese’s documentary Rolling Thunder Revue, the singer-songwriter plays her then-new song “Coyote,” which she’d written during their tour, in an intimate jam session with Bob Dylan and The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn.
This Ryan Murphy comedy follows Payton Hobart (Ben Platt) on his journey to the American presidency — but his first stop is his campaign for student body president of his elitist high school. In the series’ pilot episode, Payton sings “River” at a memorial for his former friend and lover, River (David Corenswet), who was Payton’s opponent before his death. “Oh, I wish I had a river,” Payton sings to his fellow students, from Mitchell’s anthem of regret about a relationship’s ending.
The Society follows a group of high schoolers who return to their hometown after a school camping trip only to discover all the adults have disappeared. In this episode, in which they’ve decided to organize a prom using the decorations of an abandoned bar mitzvah, Cassandra (Rachel Keller) turns on a home video slideshow of the boy and his family as “The Circle Game” plays, with Mitchell singing about being “captured on the carousel of time.” It’s a reminder of lost years, and the people who have vanished from their lives.
Though Mitchell didn’t attend Woodstock in 1969, her song “Woodstock,” released the following year, captures the celebratory and free spirit of the festival against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. “By the time we got to Woodsdtock, we were half a million strong. And everywhere there was song and celebration,” she sings. In Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, which covers the festival’s ill-fated sequel, the Matthews Southern Comfort Band rendition of Mitchell’s song plays as the series gives a brief history of the music festival, a nod to the legacy that Woodstock ’99 would fail to live up to.
