Joni Mitchell’s songs can be “deeply and poetically personal,” our music critic David Hajdu writes, and yet they “offer a richness of meticulous particulars that, with no pandering or exaggeration, work through universal feelings.” Despite all of the intimacy of a Mitchell song, it is never just about her—but about us as well. At least that is the thesis of a probing new biography of Mitchell by the veteran music writer Ann Powers. Reviewing Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell for Books & the Arts, Hajdu finds that the book makes a convincing case. Evincing a “deep knowledge of Mitchell’s life and work, American musical culture, and popular culture more broadly,” Powers shows how Mitchell’s music always told a larger story about the world that around her. Not since David Yaffe’s Restless Daughter, Hajdu notes, has a writer taken on Mitchell’s intricate and cryptic songs with such surety and insight. Even the most private of lyrics, or most sorrowful of choruses, is rendered accessible to all. Read “Seeing Ourselves in Joni Mitchell”