https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF2_1Jfgo4I
For most of the 20th century, songwriting innovation in the Western world was an extremely male enterprise. This is, of course, a way of saying that there was only half as much musical innovation as a saner society would have allowed. Or at least, judging by *my* studies, the modern history of pop music, through the end of the 1960s, featured women largely in roles as singers, and as mainstream or genre songwriters (Patsy Cline, Carole King, Loretta Lynn, Judy Collins -- all except King were more noted as interpreters than writers anyway, although at least King stood out, according to Joe Queenan, as the harbinger of the Yuppie Apocalypse).
Joni Mitchell first came to attention writing folk songs. She wrote strong, unconventional melodies and strikingly well-observed lyrical details,