Wednesday January 13, 2021 “You Turn Me on I’m a Radio” Joni Mitchell
Amazing singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell wanted her own radio hit of a song that she wrote. She had written “Both Sides Now” a hit radio song recorded by Judy Collins and also wrote “Woodstock” which was a minor radio hit for Crosby, Stills and Nash but she hadn’t had one of her own.
What’s a songwriter to do?
So she wrote a song about ‘radio’ and DJs with a really cliched lyric, had a long musical opening before the vocals to give DJ’s the opportunity to talk over the intro (we’ll talk more about this soon) and then another musical fade at the end of the song, again for the DJs. And it ran a very tight 2:40 minute making it perfectly radio friendly. Oh yeah and it was a cool tune.
Here’s Joni’s take on the song: “Take a tender situation and translate it into commonly appealing songs for the DJs. It'd have to be a bit corny, so I wrote this little song called 'Oh Honey, You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio.'"
Crosby, Stills and Nash all took part in the recording of the song with Nash playing harmonica. All of this worked well for Johi and delivered her own radio hit.
Stay safe and well...and who says you can’t manufacture a hit, just ask Milli Vanilli.