Big Yellow Taxi

Joni Mitchell
1970

In a 1996 interview with Robert Hilburn, Joni Mitchell said, “I wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart… this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote the song.”

In addition to singing about how “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” Mitchell also addresses the use of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, in her lyrics.  Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring focused on the impacts of the compound on eggs and the resulting die off of birds as well as its carcinogenic behavior in humans.  The book contributed to the burgeoning environmental movement in the United States.  DDT was banned nationally in 1972 and internationally in 2004, though its use continues in some areas.