Joni Mitchell is something of a shape shifter. Starting out in the ’60s writing simple but sophisticated and beautiful folk tunes, she soon took to folk rock and then surprised many by turning to jazz in the mid ‘70s. Her albums Ladies of the Canyon and Blue are legendary for bringing the world songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock,” and “A Case of You.” Her mid to late “70s output is not as instantly recognizable to the general public but still sold well and is revered by many. Mitchell signed to Geffen Records in the early ‘80s, along with her oft-compared to Canadian folkie genius Neil Young (I will be covering one of Neil’s albums from the Geffen era as well, Landing on Water, soonish). Her first album for the label, Wild Things Run Fast, showed Mitchell moving towards a contemporary pop style, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for what they would find on 1985’s Dog Eat Dog. Music critics were mixed with their opinions of the album: Robert Christgau gives it a B+, but focuses on the lyrics, not the music. Rolling Stone calls it an “unpleasant listen” music-wise and of the lyrics: “her social criticisms are merely the sort of bloodless liberal homilies you would expect from Rush.” Ouch. In terms of chart position, Dog Eat Dog made it to #63, the lowest since her 1968 debut.

Before dropping the needle on the vinyl, one can get a sense of what this album is going to sound like just by looking at the cover. We see Joni in a totally ‘80’s striped sleeves-rolled-up blazer and teased hair, either really groovin’ to a beat or infuriated about something. There is no better way to sum up what this album is about; Mitchell is completely immersed in the ‘80’s pop sound fashionable at the time, and she is mad as hell about everything going on in the world around her.

Let’s talk about the music first: with a whopping 4 producers working on the sound of the album including Mitchell, Larry Klein, who was also Mitchell’s husband at the time, Thomas Dolby of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame, and Mike Shipley, who has worked with artists as diverse as AC/DC and Shania Twain, Dog Eat Dog sounds unlike anything I could’ve expected to hear in a Joni Mitchell album. The production on this album is astonishingly perfectly horrible. It sounds so much like a stereotypical ‘80s synthesizer laden popfest, it’s hard to believe at times that the whole thing’s not a big joke, a satire of what popular music had become at that point in time. This is not the case, though; just another musical icon trying to keep up with the trends of the time. Listening to the first track, “Good Friends,” which is a duet with white soulster Michael McDonald, I can vividly see the opening credits to a cheesy ‘80s brat pack film or something being set to it. There are weird keyboard things going on all over the place; at times I couldn’t identify a single “real” instrument being played, other than maybe a highly processed bass. It’s awful, and yet these songs drilled themselves into my brain in a way that I have not experienced in a long time. The first time I listened to the album was on the bus heading to work, and as soon as lunch break rolled around, I needed to listen to this thing again. I probably listened to the whole album 5 times in the first 48 hours of being exposed to it, and several of the songs – “Good Friends,” “The Three Great Stimulants,” “Shiny Toys,” played on an endless loop in my brain for days and days afterwards. Something about the melodies or the instrumentation affixed itself to my little grey cells and wouldn’t let go.

Now let’s talk about the lyrics. Joni Mitchell is known as a vaguely political person who happens to be a musician – “Big Yellow Taxi” has some things to say about culture and big business, for sure, but that song is not representative of her songwriting at the time, or at any time in her career. Mostly, Mitchell writes about herself. She writes about her loves, her losses, her state of mind. She’s not a political songwriter, for the most part. On Dog Eat Dog, however, 8 of the album’s 10 songs are overtly political and not just in a general “I hate what the world has turned into, times have changed” sort of a way. “Tax Free” is about televangelists and their thieving ways; “Shiny Toys” is a pointed attack on consumerism; “Fiction” refers to the image conscious ways of the yippie-yuppies and the mixed messages being thrown at society from TV. Television is a definite leit-motif of this album, with 5 of the album’s 10 songs at least referencing the tube.

There are good political songwriters and bad political songwriters. The trick of writing a good political song is to weave your opinion or the point you’re trying to make into an interesting story, or to dress it up in such a way that the words sound good together. Bad political songwriters tend to spew their opinions forth with no regard to poetry or storytelling. Mitchell tends to purge her thoughts to the page with no attempts to clean up the mess. Take this, from “Tax Free”: “Preaching love like vengeance/preaching love like hate/calling for large donations/promising estates.” Yeah, it rhymes, but there’s nothing interesting there. Sometimes the lyrics made me laugh out loud, like this gem from “Shiny Toys”: “Party night/Good bands all over town/(good good good)/Mega lights and supersonic sounds.” When coupled with the ridiculously over-enthusiastic music, it is seriously comical. The worst of the worst in terms of lyrical content is the snail-paced dirge “Ethiopia.” I’ll give you one guess as to the topic – and the one word chorus. Also worth mentioning for their weirdness are the spoken word inserts that pop up from time to time. In “Shiny Toys,” every once in a while they (I’m guessing Dolby is the culprit here) throw in a clip of somebody saying “I love my Porsche.” In “Fiction,” a slowed down robotic voice says “TRUTH” in a Russian accent, followed by a screeching Mitchell singing “fiction.” Even though these bits and pieces seem out of place and random, it works to form the absolutely bizarre listening experience that is Dog Eat Dog.

OK, so in sum, the music is tacky and horribly produced, with none of the complexity we’ve heard from Mitchell in the past. The lyrics are obvious, hokey, and blatant as hell. So why do I think this album is brilliant in its own way? Well, I referenced it above, when I mentioned that I wished that this album was conceived as a satire of ‘80’s music and culture. But just because Dog Eat Dog was created with a straight face doesn’t negate its being a fascinating time capsule. If somebody awoke from a coma and missed the decade of the 1980’s, I would give them a copy of this and say, “that’s it in a nutshell.” I think they’d get a great picture of what was going on in politics and pop music. It’s so of its time, as Paul McCartney would say (see Press To Play review), that it’s fascinating when looking back at 25 years later. I also feel that this album has an appeal that many other Joni Mitchell albums don’t have: for one, it’s not about her! For those who are not interested in album after album about Mitchell’s love life, her dreams and desires, there’s this breath of fresh air. Also, it doesn’t have the trademark Joni Mitchell high-singing that puts off many. If you have any interest at all in revisiting ‘80’s pop culture, I urge you to pick this one up. You’ll probably hate it, but in a fascinating way.

I haven’t decided what I will delve into next – Neil Young’s Landing on Water, Frank Zappa’s Thing-Fish, and Liz Phair’s self titled album are all in the running.