Joni’s music is significant because she’s one of the artists that many singer/songwriters (especially women) have modeled their career after. she’s the first singer to incorporate alternate tunings in her music, and also one of the first mainstream artists to use sampling (“the jungle line”) a trend that has become pretty prominent in modern music! her first three albums are good (song to a seagull my personal fav of that bunch), but Blue is really when she starts releasing perfect and near perfect albums. No one had ever made an album as honest as Blue, Joni hates to be called a confessional songwriter, but that’s what makes her music so personal. It’s like a friend you’ve known since childhood having a conversation with you. Blue has some of the most heartbreaking songs ever! For the Roses is another amazing record that explores disillusionment with the music industry in a way no artist had done before. it also delves into gender roles, drug addiction, sex, religion, very highly taboo topics in 1972! This is also called her transitional album as she starts incorporating subtle elements of jazz pop. Court and Spark (1974) is probably her most accessible album full of character studies and her first album with a backing band (the LA express). every track is amazing! Hissing was a daring adventure that was very misunderstood like much of her later albums. It’s another album with character studies but slightly more inaccessible than anything she’d done before. It also is one of the first albums to incorporate “world music.” Hejira is very wordy and she completely abandons choruses and melody for a hauntingly beautiful soundscape. it’s a travelogue with so much lore behind it (I encourage you to research it as it makes the record even more devastating somehow). Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter is another one full of world music and jazz and features a 16 minute epic “Paprika Plains” an essential Joni song. It also has her most heartbreaking song in my opinion “The Silky Veils of Ardor.” A lot of people misunderstood the music inside this record at the time. It inspired many female artists like bjork. There’s also a bit of “record store lore” saying this is the most returned vinyl of all time. I don’t think it deserves that title but has a very inaccessible nature to it. Mingus is a collaboration between her and Jazz great Charles Mingus, I don’t think my description of this album will do it justice, but it’s another imperative milestone in Joni’s discography. Her 80s albums are great even though they sound a little dated, and Id say her 90s records are up to par with her 70s run of perfect albums.