"Both Sides,Now" is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. One of the first recordings is by Judy Collins,whose version appeared on the US singles chart during the fall of 1968. (The earliest commercial release was by Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters,under the title "Clouds",released in June 1967.) The next year it was included on Mitchell's album Clouds,and became one of her best-known songs. It has since been recorded by dozens of artists,including Dion in 1968,Clannad with Paul Young in 1991,and Mitchell herself,who re-recorded the song with an orchestral arrangement on her 2000 album Both Sides Now.
I was reading ... Henderson the Rain King on a plane and early in the book Henderson ... is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book,looked out the window and saw clouds too,and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did.[2][3]
"Both Sides,Now" appears in the album Joni Mitchell:Live at the Second Fret 1966 (2014,All Access Records,AACD0120),a live performance on November 17,1966,from The Second Fret in Philadelphia,PA,which was broadcast live by WRTI,Temple University's radio station. This suggests that Mitchell wrote the song before 1967 (the year of composition cited in the Los Angeles Times article above) and precedes the first Judy Collins release in 1967.
"Both Sides,Now" is written in F-sharp major. Mitchell used a guitar tuning of D-A-D-F#-A-D with a capo at the fourth fret. The song uses a modified I–IV–V chord progression.[4]
In April 2000,two months after the album's release,Mitchell sang the song with a 70-piece orchestra at the end of an all-star celebration for her at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.[6]
The 2000 version is played during an emotional scene featuring Emma Thompson in the 2003 film Love Actually.[7] It was also played during the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.[8]
Shortly after Mitchell wrote the song,Judy Collins recorded the first commercially released version for her 1967 Wildflowers album. In October 1968 the same version was released as a single,reaching number 8 on the U.S pop singles charts by December. It reached number 6 in Canada.[14] In early 1969 it won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.[15] The record peaked at number 3 on Billboard's Easy Listening survey and "Both Sides,Now" has become one of Collins' signature songs. Mitchell disliked Collins' recording of the song,despite the publicity that its success generated for Mitchell's own career.[16] The Collins version is featured as the opening title music of the 2014 romantic comedy And So It Goes,[17] and as the end title music of the 2018 supernatural horror film Hereditary.[18] It also features in the first teaser trailer for Toy Story 4.[19] The song features prominently in the season 6 finale of TV show Mad Men,and signals a moment of anagnorisis between Don Draper and his daughter Sally.
Mitchell's song has been recorded by many other artists over the decades. Among the best-known versions are:
Euson released the song as a single in 1970,reaching number 7 on the Dutch Top 40.[27]
Clannad released a version as a duet with British singer Paul Young for the 1991 motion picture Switch. It was the only chart appearance by Clannad on the Canadian RPM 100 Singles Chart.[28]
Hole's debut studio album Pretty on the Inside,released in 1991,contains a cover of the song on as its closing track. Listed under the title "Clouds",it contains additional lyrics sung by frontwoman Courtney Love.[29]
↑ Bellow, Saul (1985). Henderson the Rain King. Penguin Books. p.280. ISBN0-14-007269-1. We are the first generation to see the clouds from both sides. "... more likely 'And I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily.'" Chapter 5, paragraph 7.
↑ Whitesell, Lloyd (2008). The Music of Joni Mitchell. New York: Oxford University Press. pp.43–44.
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