New Joni Mitchell Album to Be Marketed by Starbucks

Just about the last thing music-lovers would have expected in 2007 was a new album from Joni Mitchell. Her last album of new material came out in 1998, but interest in her music had faded away long before that; fans and critics had tired of the increasingly self-conscious artsiness of her work and the increasing bitterness of her lyrics. (Her retirement a few years ago was accompanied by statements like "I hate music.") But, two years ago, she worked with Hear Music (a record label formed in partnership with Starbucks Corp. and the Concord Music Group) on a disc of favorite Mitchell songs performed by various artists, and this experience seems to have reawakened her interest in music. Her new album, "Shine," will be released on Sept. 25, by Hear Music and will be available at Starbucks, just as Paul McCartney's recent "Memory Almost Full" was. She wrote nine of the ten songs on the album, which she describes as "as serious a work as I've ever done."