Maps of Music

Dog Eat Dog (1985)

Where the lyrics of Dog Eat Dog take you, and where it was really made.

Joni Mitchell plays no guitar on Dog Eat Dog, the first album on which she focuses entirely on keyboards.

Key places

Recorded at A&M Studios, Hollywood (1985)

Recording site A&M Recording Studios — Dog Eat Dog was recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Mitchell based Smokin' on the sound of the cigarette machine in the studio's parking lot. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Twelfth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell
• Released in 1985; her second album for Geffen Records
• Like its predecessor Wild Things Run Fast, moves away from folk and jazz toward 1980s studio pop
• Highly synthetic sound, a particular departure for Mitchell
• First album on which she plays no guitar; she focuses entirely on keyboards, mostly synthesizers and the Fairlight CMI sampler

Background

• Singles: Shiny Toys and Good Friends
• Good Friends is a duet with Michael McDonald
• Bass-playing husband Larry Klein took a larger role, co-producing and playing keyboards
• Klein also wrote the music for two of the songs and helped shape the album's technological pop sound
• All guitars played by session musician Michael Landau, with an electric, textural approach very different from Mitchell's own
• On later albums Mitchell gradually returned to a more organic approach similar to her mid-1970s sound

Recording

• British electronic musician Thomas Dolby co-produced the album
• Dolby and Mitchell clashed in the studio; his precise methods were incompatible with her freeform approach
• Original issue credits Dolby as co-producer; the 2003 box set The Complete Geffen Recordings credits him only with sound file assistance
• Mitchell was enthusiastic about sampling and played a proactive role in using it
• She recorded a burglar alarm and a man hammering, which she said gave a foreboding sound because of concrete resonance
• Klein and Dolby thought the sample was too low-fidelity, but Mitchell insisted on including it
• The sound effect is used on The Three Great Stimulants, after the line about deep in the night

Cover

• Joni Mitchell is credited with the cover painting

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · pt.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

• Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter, born Roberta Joan Anderson in 1943 in Fort Macleod, Alberta.

Formation

• Began singing in Saskatoon nightclubs, then performed in Calgary and Toronto before moving to the United States in 1965.
• Her songs were first recorded by other singers, which helped her sign with Reprise Records.
• Debut album Song to a Seagull was released in 1968.

Career

• Blue (1971) is often cited as one of the greatest albums of all time.
• Court and Spark (1974) moved toward jazz influences and became her best-selling album.
• Collaborated with jazz musicians including Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, and Charles Mingus.
• Won eleven Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
• Returned to live performance in 2022 at the Newport Folk Festival after a 2015 brain aneurysm.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Paste's Ellen Johnson described the album as synth-fueled pop
• Reviewer William Ruhlmann wrote that Mitchell was continuing to straddle the worlds of California folk/pop and jazz fusion
• Some links to her earlier work remain, through the use of horns and appearances by James Taylor and saxophonist Wayne Shorter

Reappraisal

• Generally considered one of Mitchell's weakest releases, usually placed near or at the bottom of rankings of her discography
• The Guardian ranked it last in her catalog, saying Mitchell is virtually unrecognisable here and criticizing its homogenised 80s sound
• Paste also ranked it her weakest, saying it isn't unlistenable but that Joni's own hand is practically unrecognizable in the music
• Paste criticized Landau's playing as a copycat of popular heartland rock artists of the day
• Far Out described Mitchell as a disguised artist on an album full of homogenised eighties sounds that can make a purist baulk

Records

• Billboard 200: number 63
• Lyrics address Reaganism, televangelists, consumerism and famine in Ethiopia

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · fr.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Smokin' was built around the sound of the cigarette machine in the parking lot of A&M
• According to Mitchell's notes on The Complete Geffen Recordings, the machine was played live rather than sampled
• Mitchell recorded a burglar alarm and a man hammering to make a foreboding sound
• Klein and Dolby thought the sample was too low-fidelity, but Mitchell kept it on The Three Great Stimulants
• Good Friends was a duet with Michael McDonald, and its video used film animation by Jim Blashfield
• Rod Steiger made a voiceover appearance as a televangelist on Tax Free

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · fr.wikipedia.org

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