In Songbook This Week: "Impossible Dreamer" by Joni Mitchell

Songwriter(s): Joni Mitchell

A tribute to idealists who call for world peace, an end to famine, environmental justice and other social goods, “Impossible Dreamer” is Joni Mitchell’s wise and tender, slightly wry response. Mitchell knows we’d be worse off without people in the streets and elsewhere advocating for improvement, even though she is ruefully aware that positive change, if it can be achieved, may not be lasting. The romantic notion of “love without pain” is gently rebuffed but also receives a sincere tip of Mitchell’s beret.

John Lennon comes inevitably to mind when Mitchell sings “Give peace a chance,” but other specific dreamers saluted here—Martin Luther King, Jr., is an obvious candidate—are unidentified. They may or may not be famous: “In the darkest part of the night, blue shadows conjure you” could be a reference to images seen by a television’s light or to the ambiguous shapes that confront us in sleep. Those who resist unscrupulous manipulators and opportunists (“sharks” in the lyric), whether in business or personal relationships, are remembered here, too.

We open with “an angry crowd” making noise in the street. With her ability to sing in a way that calls to mind the feeling or experience her lyrics describe while adding emotional color, Mitchell’s phrasing suggests the crowd’s defiance. We hear the same trick in her overdubbed choral vocals on the repeated word “dreamer”—it shimmers like a mirage, recognizing that visionary ideals, though they deserve respect, could be hallucinatory. Mitchell lists dreams such as “love without pain,” after which her dismissive “impossible” is delivered with exquisite tenderness. When she sings “Sometimes I blink when I think I see you,” she slightly speeds up the word blink to make it mirror the action it describes. This kind of subtlety may not register with some listeners, but for Mitchell’s admirers it adds to the pleasure and excitement of her work.

Beginning with Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter in 1977, Wayne Shorter appeared on the majority of Mitchell’s studio albums, contributing to multiple tracks on each one. His tenor and alto saxophone work here and elsewhere is as expressive as her singing. (On this track, Shorter’s bandmate from Weather Report, percussionist Alex Acuña, plays the bata, a Nigerian drum perhaps chosen as much for its historic spiritual associations as for its sound.) Mitchell has said that Shorter, who died in 2023, was her favorite collaborator and that she would have asked him to play on more of her songs if contractual obligations hadn’t restricted his ability to make guest appearances. Their unique affinity likely had to do with the fact that they are both painterly musicians who in fact shared a love for making visual art.

Shorter and Mitchell are partners pushing each other to greatness. “Blue shadows conjure you,” she sings, and his ascending figure rises like ghostly images emanating from a TV screen. When she sings “Don’t think, just dance,” the bleats of his sax suggest abandon. They were a dream team, so good they were almost impossible.