Editing Joni Mitchell (section)

===2000–2005: ''Both Sides Now'', retirement tour and retrospectives===
The singer's next two albums featured no new songs and, Mitchell has said, were recorded to "fulfill contractual obligations",<ref name="Toronto" /> but on both she attempted to make use of her new vocal range in interpreting familiar material. ''[[Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell album)|Both Sides Now]]'' (2000) was an album composed mostly of covers of jazz standards, performed with an orchestra, featuring orchestral arrangements by [[Vince Mendoza]]. The album also contained remakes of "A Case of You" and the title track "Both Sides, Now", two early hits transposed down to Mitchell's new dusky, soulful alto range. It received mostly strong reviews and motivated a short national tour, with Mitchell accompanied by a core band featuring her ex-husband Larry Klein on bass plus a local orchestra on each tour stop. Its success led to 2002's ''[[Travelogue (Joni Mitchell album)|Travelogue]]'', a collection of re-workings of her previous songs with lush orchestral accompaniments.

Mitchell stated at the time that ''Travelogue'' would be her final album. In a 2002 interview with ''Rolling Stone'', she voiced discontent with the state of the music industry, describing it as a "cesspool".<ref name="wild" /> Mitchell expressed her dislike of the record industry's dominance and her desire to control her own destiny, possibly by releasing her own music over the Internet.

During the next few years, the only albums Mitchell released were compilations of her earlier work. In 2003, her Geffen recordings were collected in a remastered four-disc box set, ''The Complete Geffen Recordings'', including notes by Mitchell and three previously unreleased tracks. A series of themed compilations of songs from earlier albums were also released: ''The Beginning of Survival'' (2004), ''[[Dreamland (Joni Mitchell album)|Dreamland]]'' (2004), and ''Songs of a Prairie Girl'' (2005), the last of which collected the threads of her Canadian upbringing and which she released after accepting an invitation to the [[Commemorative Medal for the Centennial of Saskatchewan|Saskatchewan Centennial]] concert in Saskatoon. The concert, which featured a tribute to Mitchell, was also attended by [[Elizabeth II|Queen Elizabeth II]]. In the ''Prairie Girl'' liner notes, she wrote that the collection is "my contribution to Saskatchewan's Centennial celebrations".

In the early 1990s, Mitchell signed a deal with [[Random House]] to publish an autobiography.<ref>Dickinson, Chrissie. [http://www.jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1334 "Court and No Spark"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012164130/http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1334 |date=October 12, 2007}} (book review, reprint), ''[[The Washington Post]]'', June 15, 2005. Retrieved on September 25, 2007.</ref> In 1998 she told ''[[The New York Times]]'' that her memoirs were "in the works", that they would be published in as many as four volumes, and that the first line would be "I was the only black man at the party."<ref>[[Neil Strauss|Strauss, Neil]]. [https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/04/magazine/the-hissing-of-a-living-legend.html?pagewanted=all "The Hissing of a Living Legend"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170630155350/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/04/magazine/the-hissing-of-a-living-legend.html?pagewanted=all |date=June 30, 2017}}, ''The New York Times'', October 4, 1998. Retrieved on September 25, 2007.</ref> In 2005, Mitchell said that she was using a tape recorder to get her memories "down in the oral tradition".<ref name="nymag">[[Ethan Brown (journalist)|Brown, Ethan]]. [https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/music/pop/11888/ "Influences: Joni Mitchell"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200510193040/https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/music/pop/11888/ |date=May 10, 2020}}, ''[[New York (magazine)|New York]]'', May 9, 2005. Retrieved on September 25, 2007.</ref>