Joni Mitchell will release her new album through Starbucks' Hear Music label.
Mitchell joins Paul McCartney on the roster, whose 'Memory Almost Full' album debuted at number three on the US Billboard Chart in June.The folk-jazz icon will release her new album 'Shine' on September 25, the follow-up to 2002's 'Travelogue'. The release of 'Travelogue' coincided with Mitchell's public grievances with the music industry and the power it had over her. She said at the time that she would look for new avenues in which to release her music.
And in March of this year, she told Britain's 'Guardian' newspaper of her disdain for the "pornographic pigs" at the upper echelons of the post-millennial music industry, those who only care about "golf and rappers".
"A real artist is going to like a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and it's going to take an entire life to assimilate them into something new," she continued. "It's not going to happen when you're young, and this is a youth-driven market. It's like painting: everybody knows, or they used to, that it takes a long time to distil all this. You don't become a master until you're in your 50s and 60s."
But it looks like Starbucks have a way to go in developing their flowery PR guff, with Starbucks Entertainment president Ken Lombard telling Billboard, "This is true Joni - it is almost the return of her as a storyteller." Almost?
We can expect at least one more big-name Hear Music signing by the end of the year.
