See the music legend serenade us with “Both Sides, Now.”
After winning the award for Best Folk Album, Joni Mitchell created one of the biggest moments of Sunday evening’s Grammys telecast when she hit the stage for a stirring performance that we won’t soon forget.
Joined by a superstar cast of supporting musicians — including Brandi Carlile, Jacob Collier, Allison Russell, Sista Strings, Lucius, and Blake Mills — Mitchell brought down the house as only she can, with a beautiful rendition of her iconic classic “Both Sides, Now.”
The emotion that translated through the screen was clearly felt in the room, with the likes of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Meryl Streep feeling the moment from the crowd. And as this video posted to X illustrates, the adulation when Mitchell was done radiated from the entire arena.
This primetime performance marks a huge moment in Mitchell’s life. At 80, she’s undoubtedly one of the most legendary musicians of the modern era, and masterworks like “A Case of You,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “River” have become a storied soundtrack for multiple generations. But Mitchell faced a major health setback when she suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015.
“I couldn’t talk. Polio didn’t grab me like that, but the aneurysm took away a lot more, really. Took away my speech and my ability to walk,” Mitchell recalled in 2020.
Despite her debilitating condition, she managed to return to music with a little help. Some of that came from Brandi Carlile, who began hosting “Joni Jams” in which Mitchell and her friends could come together and play in a private setting, without the pressure of a public performance.
And then there was some assistance from the Internet, too. Mitchell said in 2022 that online tutorials had helped her in relearning to play the guitar. “I’m looking at videos that are on the net, to see where to put my fingers. It’s amazing,” she explained. “When you have an aneurysm, you don’t know how to get into a chair. You don’t know how to get out of bed. You have to learn all these things again. You’re going back to infancy, almost.”
But the Grammys performance wasn’t her first big return to the public eye. In 2022, she made a surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. With accompaniment from Carlile and a large group of friends, Mitchell brought the audience to tears (and went majorly viral online) as she reminded us all that, while her voice has weathered and her body has been challenged, her one-of-a-kind artistic spirit perseveres as strongly as it ever did.
The Grammys won’t be her last public performance, either. Mitchell is scheduled to perform at the Hollywood Bowl in California this October, and she just added a second date “due to overwhelming demand.”
