However, and this is a very personal opinion, the albums The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus are (IMO), the four pillars of Mitchell's work. Pillars, and not summits.

This because of what that term implies for the albums which succeeded those alleged peaks of excellence : their posterity inevitably would be assimilated to a descending slope, and consequently to some decline. And that is not at all the case, concerning the post-Mingus part of Joni Mitchell’s work. Because the artist has demonstrated, before and after them, with albums in a different key (and sometimes less homogeneous perhaps), that the genius that characterizes her work had been there all the way through.
Purposely, I neither include in this cycle of referent albums -from The Hissing of Summer Lawns to Mingus-, the seductive, brillant and more than perfect Court & Spark, that heralded the completion of metamorphosis to come, but that did not reach the radical adventurous creativity displayed by its successors. Nor do I include the sublime Shadows & Light of 1980, since this album was recorded live in 1979 at the Santa Barbara County Ball, and therefore does not show any original compositions -even if it represents the quintessence of Joni Mitchell's art on stage, with the complicity of Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius -all fabulous "Jazz-Rock Fusion" magicians.

Joni Mitchell’s production of the 1980s (a decade that the artist foresaw as "ugly", "hideous" and catastrophic, and God knows that it turned out to be such, with the exception of the oasis that her marriage with bassist, composer and arranger Larry Klein represented then), is considered by many as being too eclectic, yielding to fads -if not

facile trends. But I do not subscribe to that opinion. Indeed, the three albums belonging to this period are very interesting, beautiful and powerful. Simply, this series of albums is less homogenic than the previous one, because the compositions it includes seem to be more independent each of the other. The obvious common thread that linked for example Hejira to Don Juan's Reckless Daughter; and the latter to Mingus, is more tenuous in the Eighties' trilogy of recordings than in the previous decade's series of albums.
Thereby, each of the 1980's outputs represents a break with its predecessor and not the evolutionary change that was undeniably specific of her previous work with each new album's release. Starting with For The Roses, and including all further collaborations with the L.A Express Band led by Tom Scott, resulting with her encounter with John Guerin, and then her opening to the musical idioms commonly shared by Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius and finally paving the way to the Mingus apotheosis.

First studio album of the new decade in 1982, Wild Things Run Fast is a "Back to Basics" album, coloured with a touch of jazzy Rock -but no longer an excursion into the fields of experimental Jazz-Rock, as Court & Spark had opened the way for.
Overall less successful and generally less sophisticated than Court & Spark, the piece still contains its moments of grace with exceptional tracks like Chinese Cafe, Moon at the Window, Be Cool and Love.

Released in 1985, its successor Dog Eat Dog is mainly considered by many as suffering from Thomas Dolby's production (considered inflated and too invasive), and from the famous "big sound" specific to that period of recordings.