They stand as testament to the timeless resonances of Mitchell’s musicianship. But they are also proof that a raw moment of truth, half whispered into a mic, can carry more power than any number of shrieking guitars or chest-beating histrionics.

The legacy of Blue is all around. It’s in the music of Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Björk, Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley and Damien Rice.

And today it lives on in Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Laura Marling, Maggie Rodgers, Phoebe Bridgers, Olivia Rodrigo and others.

The reach of Blue, of course, extended to Ireland, where the singer-songwriter has always been set on a pedestal.

Here, four artists talk about their relationship with the LP and its legacy.

Emma Langford

"Joni’s voice and lyricism are of a time and place and also totally timeless. The production quality on the tracks, plus her vibrato and timbre, are so distinctly of the 70s, but also what make her voice stand out a country mile on every radio playlist.

“And they're what draw us back now to listen over and over. For me, it’s her vulnerability and the honesty in her voice.

"I find it inspiring as a vocalist. Her songs on Blue are universal stories of heartache and wanderlust and homesickness and self-actualisation.

"There's something in there for everyone: a real sense of story to each, and she tells 'em lovely.

"I was on the road on the East Coast of America in 2014. Not on tour, just back-packing for three months shortly after a fairly difficult break-up.

"And I got Joni’s Blue up on my phone on whatever streaming platform I was using back then. On a bus somewhere between New York and Philadelphia, I started listening and didn't stop.

"I'd been asked prior to that trip if I'd been influenced by Joni. But I'd never listened to her, really. Not actively. And all of a sudden there was this one album where it felt like every single song was talking directly to me.

"So that's why I love Joni. Because she came to me at a time when I needed her, and handed me all these songs that made me feel understood and held.

"She's been there since in different ways. And while I know everyone has their own reasons for loving her and her work, I think for many singers and musicians and songwriters, she feels like a friend.”

Niamh Regan

“I first encountered her music when I was learning how to play guitar. I really did my best to find and replicate her playing on her song Case of You.

"The Joni chords opened up a lot of options for me as a young musician. The thing about Joni’s music for me is you just believe her. You believe the words and feel it with her.

"There’s not many artists who can do that. But I guess that’s the reason we’re talking and celebrating Blue still."

Gráinne Hunt

“Joni is a goddess!! I first heard Blue about 21 years ago when I started university and one of my best friends there introduced us to Blue (and Court and Spark) over nights of deep conversations at her place.

“It was probably the first time I'd heard a woman doing what she did: writing profound, beautiful songs, delivering them in her exquisite voice and style.

"Joni has a way with lyrics, a raw honesty, coupled with her soaring sweeping vocal. It hits me right in the heart.

"That melancholy in her songs reverberates around my body and regularly spills out of my eyes. Blue is a perfect piece of art. Lyrically, she just nails things.

“’The bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide’, ‘I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet’. She gets it so right every time.

"I think the fact that her songs are so genuine and authentic make them resonate with people. That, in turn, is what makes them endure.

“It's because of Joni that I started exploring open tunings on the guitar, mostly as an excuse to perform Both Sides Now. And that has led to writing new songs.

Jack O’Rourke

“I was 16, working in Vibes and Scribes, a Cork record shop, during my Transition Year work experience. I’d seen the VH1 special, 100 Greatest Women in Music.

"Joni was hovering in the top five between Aretha and Janis Joplin. I recognised Big Yellow Taxi, but nothing could have prepared me for my cool, older Psychedelic Furs T-shirt-wearing colleague sticking on Joni’s Blue.

"As the title track states, Joni’s songs ‘are like tattoos’ and they’re still underneath my skin.

"Joni’s voice hit me hard. The sheer emotion, keening like a Sean Nós singer. And she phrased like Billie Holiday.

"It was beautiful but it wasn’t easy listening. It felt you were intruding on her wailing or whispering secrets. And she was.

"Lines like ‘I could drink a case of you and I’d still be on my feet’, lamenting her relationship with James Taylor [with whom she’d got together after parting from Nash] to the strum of her dulcimer. It is a metaphor so beautiful, so personal and so original.

"For anyone who feels the sense of failure after a long-term love ends, All I Want, which opens the album in a frenzy of desire and shame and longing, is so apt.

“’I hate you some, I love you some, I love you when I forget about me.’ She spoke to my isolation: ‘I wanna belong to the living.’ I was a young gay boy, who couldn’t even contemplate being out. And Joni was my big sister.

"The music on Blue is a universe of its own. It’s in my soul. It reminds me of college days up on a roof, badly imitating her vocal acrobatics in a haze of smoke.

"Melodies swoop and dive to unexpected places. Her rhythms have subtle grooves — which is remarkable, as she accompanies herself without a rhythm section.

“As a piano player, I was amazed by her chords on the title track Blue — they are impressionistic like Debussy or Ravel. Her guitar tunings are alien-like.

"When I hit my bucket list in 2019 and got the call from Other Voices to play St James’s Church in Dingle at Christmas, I decided to sing River with Loah.

"Like Fairytale of New York, it captures the loneliness and the honesty of Christmas. Joni accompanies herself, using Jingle Bells as a motif wishing for ‘a river to skate away on’. It’s a perfect song.

"Like an Irishman listening to an aria in Italian, if you didn’t know the words in English, the sheer beauty of the melody and her voice would reduce anyone to tears. And there were a few in St James’s Church that night.”