Like many musicians, Joni Mitchell hated listening to her older recordings.

"Oh no, no, no, no, it would make my skin crawl," she said. "I know where the bodies are buried: where I rhymed jewels and schools or where I indulged some musical eccentricity that seemed like a good idea at the time." Thus, it's somewhat surprising that Ms. Mitchell, who retired from active performing and recording a few years ago, is devoting all of her musical endeavors to curating her own career retrospective, creating a series of anthologies based around different themes in her work. In doing so, she's bringing new light to several important and often neglected phases of her career.

Although many rumors circulated about health reasons causing Ms. Mitchell's retirement, the 61-year-old singer says it was her own exasperation with the music industry that led her to cease writing and performing new music. "This is a dog race industry and there's pressure to create hits, fast dogs; everything else is regarded as failure," she said. "I wasn't a fast dog, nor did I want to be." She added, "my career wasn't one of finding a formula and sticking to it. Instead, it was one of exploration."

Ms. Mitchell's first six recordings constitute a body of work that is a key part of the rock canon, but she strove toward new musical horizons and her audience failed to follow. Her early work features deceptively simple melodies and introspective lyrics of searing intimacy sung in a pristine mezzo-soprano. Her 1971 recording, "Blue" (Warner Bros), set new standards for detail in confessional songwriting as she chronicled love lost, the pain of putting a child up for adoption and the rising sense that her yearnings will never be fulfilled.

While "Blue" maintained a spare, melancholy tone, Ms. Mitchell's 1974 release, "Court & Spark" (Asylum), had a breezy and jaunty tone while it examined the role of candor in relationships. Most contemporary singer/songwriters are indebted to her, but many are merely content to announce their feelings. Ms. Mitchell's work constantly probed the root sources of those feelings and evaluated them against the bigger picture of her emotional desires.

However, with the release in 1975 of "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" (Asylum), she moved on from a jazzy, folk-rock style, integrating elements of African and contemporary classical music into her sound and taking her explorations of jazz to new, often ponderous lengths. This darker, urbane music was matched by Ms. Mitchell's lyrics, which turned a withering gaze at privileged life in New York and Los Angeles in songs like "Shades of Scarlett Conquering" and "Dreamland."

However, she was tender and empathetic in depicting the final months of jazz great Charles Mingus on her 1980 release "Mingus" (Asylum). "Summer Lawns" and other '70s releases like "Hejira" (Asylum) that were initially released to mixed reviews ultimately found a receptive crowd among critics and musicians; in 1999, Central Park Summerstage devoted its Canada Day concert to performances of Ms. Mitchell's music from the mid- and late '70s. However, the stellar music she created on subsequent releases like "Dog Eat Dog" (Geffen, 1985) and "Taming the Tiger" (Reprise, 1998) was largely ignored.

Two years ago, Rhino Records, the imprint that specializes in archival reissues, contacted Ms. Mitchell's management about a "best of" release. When she reviewed the label's choices, the singer was dismayed. "There's no way you can call this the best of," she told officials at Rhino. "You can call it the boss's choices. These songs are catchy and popular but in no way were these my best work." Following a little back-and-forth, both sides settled on the song list for "Dreamland" (Rhino), a fine primer that ranges from early hits like "Carey" and "Help Me" to her late '90s orchestral recordings of "Both Sides Now" and "For the Roses."

Ms. Mitchell and the folks at Rhino enjoyed the process, so they delved specifically into her '80s and '90s works next, on a project called "The Beginning of Survival." The 16-song program, which was released on the Geffen imprint and doesn't overlap with "Dreamland," features attacks on consumerism in "The Windfall" and "Everything for Nothing," a satire of televangelism in "Tax Free," an ode to environmentalism in "Cool Water," and "The Beat of Black Wings," a sympathetic song for soldiers returning from warfare. "It was before the election and the liberals didn't seem to have much backbone, so I decided to review my own political stance, which is neither liberal nor conservative but somewhere in between the two parties."

That may surprise people who see Ms. Mitchell as a voice of the Woodstock generation antiwar movement, but she has always blazed her own independent political path. For instance, during the Vietnam War she regularly performed for soldiers in Charleston, S.C., and at Fort Bragg. "I saw them after they came back from the war, often broken," she said. "I didn't think it was right that they met with the scorn of their generation."

Rhino has signed Ms. Mitchell to do three more compilations. The first one, "Songs of a Prairie Girl," will be released in April; it is a collection of songs that reflect on her upbringing in Saskatchewan, which is celebrating its centennial this year. While combing her catalog for that collection, she was contacted by the folks at the Starbucks-owned imprint, Hear Music, about doing a collection of music that influenced her for their Artist's Choice series (the company has also released a companion anthology, where fellow heavyweights like Prince and Bob Dylan present their favorite tracks by Ms. Mitchell). The concept intrigued her. "If somebody asked me what are my influences, I couldn't really say; I never stopped to think about it," she said. "You don't look back; you just keep going forward."

For the Hear Music project, Ms. Mitchell made a list of the works that had "stopped me in my tracks," creating a diverse program that includes Debussy's "Claire De Lune" performed by Phillipe Entremont, Steely Dan's "Third World Man," Billie Holiday's "Solitude," Bob Dylan's "Sweetheart Like You" and Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man." What surprised her most was the sway that Duke Ellington's elegant and diverse music had on her. She said that she was impressed by the swaggering humor that his music maintained. Only one of the 18 tracks on the disc, The New Radicals' "You Get What You Give," was recorded in the past 10 years. This lack of representation reflects Ms. Mitchell's discontent with the current state of popular music. "It's not about talent anymore, it's about a look, and a willingness to cooperate."

One key exception to her contempt is "Got Till It's Gone," a collaboration between Janet Jackson and the progressive rapper Q-Tip. The song is built around an audio snippet of the chorus to Ms. Mitchell's 1973 hit, "Big Yellow Taxi." She not only approved the usage but appears via a televised image in the video. "It was brilliant, full of humanity and dignity, instead of whores and criminals," she said. "It was needed. I was very pleased to be part of it."

Although she is frequently cited as the inspiration for the current generation of singer/songwriters, including Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin and Natalie Merchant, she's disdainful of their work. She cites a failure on their part to take more musical risks, feeling that they listened to her early recordings and failed to capture the full breadth of her recording career.

Ms. Mitchell lives in Southern California, and devotes most of her time now to painting. "That concerted push -- living to paint, like a crazy artist -- really solidified my style," she said. However, don't expect any gallery shows just yet; for now, she's content to use her paintings on album covers and seems wary of mixing art and commerce again.

Through emerging technologies, Ms. Mitchell does see one glimmer of hope for the future of music. "All the intelligent kids today are getting iPods," she said. "They are bypassing the radio and going back to the older music."

Mr. Johnson lives in New York and writes about popular music for the Journal.