Neil Young, Leonard
Cohen, and Joni Mitchell’s Post-AIDS Lyrics: Canadian Cultural
Critiques?
***
Bent
Sørensen, Aalborg U., Denmark
Poetry
and
Politics Conference, Stirling, July 13-16, 2006
This paper examines the
lyrics of Canadian
singer-songwriters, Young, Cohen, and Mitchell, with special view to
elucidating
their stances on issues of sexual politics in the wake of the AIDS
pandemic in
the mid-1980s and early 1990s. All three writers are Canadian in origin
but
internationalised themselves to varying degrees during the 1960s and
70s: Cohen
lived in Europe and Los Angeles for years at a time; Young became an
all-American icon in both rock and country circles, for instance via
his
engagement in the Farm Aid-movement; and Mitchell devoted most of her
life from
the early 60s to California and its counter-culture milieus.
All
three share a
counter-culture legacy,
bursting to international fame with socio-critical and/or allegorical
lyrics in
the 1960s: Young’s song “Ohio” about
the Kent State
massacre, or his post-apocalyptic lyrics to “After the Gold Rush”
critiqued US
political decisions and ideologies. Cohen’s anthem “Suzanne” was widely
interpreted as a manifesto for freer sexual morals in the wake of the
American
hippie revolt against bourgeois morality. Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”
was a
lyrical elegy for the loss of harmony and nature, and her anti-war
anthem “Woodstock”
celebrated the
togetherness of a whole late-1960s generation.
The three global Canadians
took a step back
from political lyrics in the latter half of the 70s and found
expression mainly
through personal accounts, often love songs. With the AIDS wave
apparently
again making the personal political in the mid- to late 80s and early
90s, all
three songwriters found new cause to use the disease as a master
metaphor for a
socio-political critique of their new American homeland: Young in the
song
“Misfits” from 1985’s Old
Ways album,
Cohen throughout his 1992 album The
Future, and Mitchell in
the song “Sex Kills” from her 1994 album Turbulent Indigo.
This paper
presents a comparative analysis of the
three songwriters’ post-AIDS allegories and poses the question of
whether these
songs might not be read as specifically Canadian cultural critiques
uttered
from within the American hegemony manifesting itself more and more, as
the Cold
War approached its end and gave way to a one superpower global order.
[read paper...]