Which three would you designate, HiLo? Surely Blue and Court & Spark, though I think she ought to have been more specific about crediting Lambert Hendricks & Ross on "Twisted". It wasn't at all clear in the liner notes, and it's easy to think it's a Joni original if you've never come across that song before. (She later commented somewhere that 'Annie's really hard on me' - wonder why?!) I do think she made a great job of it, though. I love Raised On Robbery too.

There are various possibilities for the third nomination as "all-time classic" - maybe Ladies Of The Canyon or Hejira? But my personal fave is her first LP (Song To A Seagull) - anybody else love this one as much as I do? It tends to get rather dissed these days as being too "folky" or "dated" or whatever, but I disagree. I was mesmerised from the first note - which I heard when barely conscious.

I was sleeping in late one morning and my roommate came into the room with our giant transistor radio, plunked it down right next to my ear, turned the volume up, and said, 'This is the chick I've been telling you about.' I drifted awake to the sound of Joni singing Cactus Tree. That night at my boyfriend's apartment, in a suitably candle-lit room, he put something on the stereo and said 'listen to this'. It was Joni in I Had A King. Magic. I went to the record shop next day to buy the album and the guy behind the counter said they'd sold out. He remarked that everybody had been in, asking for it. It certainly caught on like wildfire at my college.

So that LP has a special place in my heart - but a lot of people seem to regard Ladies Of The Canyon as her first, which means they probably haven't even heard of it. I'd be interested to know what albums other fans would choose as her best, and how well they like (or don't) that first one. The whole concept - a collection of songs in a specific order - is being lost now.

When I was a kid I wanted to be Annette. In my coffee-house-guitar-and-long-hair college days I wanted to be Joni.