“I really don’t Know life…”: Autobiography, Time, and ‘Vocal Mirroring’ in Annie Lennox’s Cover of “Both Sides, Now”

In March 2023, Annie Lennox covered Joni Mitchell’s song, “Both Sides, Now” (1969; 2000; 2022) as part of Mitchell’s Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song concert. Lennox’s performance creates a space for her to vocalize a life narrative intertwined within Mitchell’s songs. I posit that the combination of the cover song as “time traveler” (Plasketes, 2005) and Lennox’s “vocal mirror” creates a complex vocal autobiography, shifting the performance “out of time and out of place” (Halberstam, 2005). I investigate the aging of songs alongside the aging of people and consider this a “musical entanglement” which disrupts chronology and narrative.