Three Very Different Legends Who Covered Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”

March 27, 2026

By Karen Bliss

Joni Mitchell, 82, wrote the contemplative folk song “Both Sides Now” in 1967 when she was just 23. Close to 60 years later, the lyric still resonates.

She has said that the inspiration came from Saul Bellow’s novel Henderson the Rain King. On her website, Mitchell is quoted as saying she “got halfway through and sort of left the whole plot up in the air, literally, and got inspired to write the next song.”

At the White Swan in Leicester, England, and the Second Fret in Philadelphia, both in 1967, she reportedly introduced the song the exact same way, word for word, explaining the origin of the lyric that has since been interpreted thousands of times by artists of every genre around the world.

“This is a song that talks about sides to things,” she reportedly said. “In most cases, there are both sides to things and in a lot of cases there are more than just both. His and a hers. His and theirs. But, in this song, there are only two sides to things… there’s reality and, I guess, what you might call fantasy. There’s enchantment and dis-enchantment, what we’re taught to believe things are and what they really are.”

Sometimes called “Clouds” — “they’re both right,” she told the crowd at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1968 — “Both Sides Now” was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.

The wistful reflection on childlike wonder to adult disillusionment has been recorded, according to Mitchell’s web site, by other artists over 1500 times, starting in 1968 by both Judy Collins and a “sunshine pop” band called Harpers Bizarre. Collins’ version became a global hit, winning a Grammy for best folk performance. By the time Mitchell recorded it for her 1969 album, Clouds, some people thought she was covering Collins’ song.

Since then, the number of artists who have covered “Both Sides Now” is too long to list. Among them are Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Anne Murray, Paul Anka, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Glenn Campbell, Robert Goulet, Fairport Convention, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, Pete Seeger, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Hole. There’s also been instrumental versions by Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, and others.

Mitchell recorded a sweeping, orchestral version for her 2000 album, Both Sides Now, which earned string arranger Vince Mendoza a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s).

In film, it was performed as a duet by Paul Young and Clannad for 1991’s Switch, and by Emilia Jones, as the character of Ruby Rossi, who sang it accompanied by sign language for her Berklee audition in the 2021 Oscar-winning film CODA. But, arguably, the most poignant or memorable usage is the sync of Mitchell’s original version in 2003’s Love Actually, as Emma Thompson’s chacater Karen receives a CD of Clouds as a Christmas present from her husband, confirming her belief that he is cheating.

While there are so many versions to write about, CSHF selected three very different artists who interpreted the song:

Hole

Recorded as “Clouds,” on the American grunge band’s 1991 debut album, Pretty on the Inside, singer Courtney Love definitely made it her own. She moves up a verse, omits other lines, and changes some outright, kicking off the song with just two words “bad boy” and adding “Angel dust gets in your eyes, your hair / On acid stars you’re getting there / My body’s assembled a little itty-bitty gift to you/ When you die, I’ve looked at life that way.” Unrecognizable from the original, in vibe, Love’s brash, raw, and accusatory delivery is apparently a “noise troll on my mother,” she said, while Mitchell’s is reflective and melancholy.

Carly Rae Jepsen

The Canadian pop singer starts off her version of “Both Sides Now” in a soft folk vein but then pumps it up with a groove and bright dance mix.  Recorded in 2011 with producer Ryan Stewart, the cut is found on her 2012 EP, Curiosity. It was also on a B-side of the “Call Me Maybe” single.   In 2019, she told Pitchfork, as a kid, her parents divorced and remarried, by the time she was five, “Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides, Now’ really helped me reflect upon the two houses I was in: “I looked at love from both sides now.” Everything about it was really poetic for me; I was always looking for songs that explained what I was going through.”

Herbie Hancock

The American jazz pianist released an entire album of Mitchell’s songs in 2007 called River: The Joni Letters, which won Grammys for Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Jazz Album. For over two minutes of the seven-and-a-half-minute cover, you would not know that it’s “Both Sides Now.” It’s an instrumental (he does have guest vocalists on six of the album’s tracks, including Mitchell) but the melody doesn’t emerge until later. Using the piano to interpret her words, he’s called it a “free-floating tone poem,” and told Jazziz magazine, he used “all these tonalities that the lyric suggested to me.” About five minutes in is the aha moment, Wayne Shorter’s saxophone, cluing in the listener to the beloved melody.

In 2008, he told Jazz Times, “Something happened when I was trying to figure out what to do with that song. I started following what I was feeling, and it was getting more and more interesting. I said, ‘It would naturally go here, but I want it to go somewhere it’s not expected to go.’ I tried something and I said, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a surprise.’ “But then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, these are Joni’s words. I haven’t really looked at them to see if what I’m doing makes sense in terms of the words.’ So I went back and looked at the words. I’d read two lines and I’d have to stop. I’d go, ‘She didn’t say that, did she? How could she come up with that?’ Finally, I said, ‘The meaning as I feel it seems to say it’s OK for me to do this.’”