The 100 Greatest Entertainers

Who knew, when Joni Mitchell was first melting folk-rock hearts with sense of wonder songs like "Chelsea Morning," that behind the sweet soprano lay popular music's most stubborn personality, a woman who would consistently veer from the expected path? The Canadian's late-'60s arrival came at a time when "women's songs were written by men, 99 percent of the time. They carried the old feminine values according to the master," Mitchell, 55, remembers. "My songs began to reveal feminine insecurities, doubts, recognition that the order was falling apart." The abundance of songs on the confessional standard-setter Blue led to her most successful album, 1974's Court and Spark.

And right at that commercial peak, our Lady of the Canyon took another ravine less traveled: the way of Miles and Mingus. "I stopped playing in standard tuning, to get chords that didn't sound like the chords everybody else was playing. In the same way that Van Gogh searched for his own color schemes, I searched for my own harmonic voice, found it, and spent a career being dismissed as too jazzy." Resistance only stiffened her resolve. "Black influence on my work seemed to offend young white critics," she laughs. "When Hejira [1976] was trashed in America, I thought, there's nothing to do except experiment more." Mitchell's albums continue to mine this uncompromising vein, empowering devotees from Tori Amos to Prince. Most laudably, Mitchell never used her rare tours to milk the oldies, unlike any middle-aged contemporary you'd care to name. "I will not be a living jukebox," she declares. "I tried to make that very clear along the way." Crystal.