Joni Mitchell becomes US citizen after 62 years in America

Joni Mitchell posted a photograph to Instagram this week—herself standing beside an American flag, holding a certificate. The caption was simple: "A journey that began 62 years ago." At eighty-two, the Canadian-born singer-songwriter had just become a United States citizen, a legal status she had lived without for more than six decades despite building her entire artistic life on American soil.

The ceremony itself was quiet enough to fit on a phone screen. Mitchell shared footage of it on social media, a small public acknowledgment of a transition that, for most people, would have happened decades earlier. But Mitchell had remained a Canadian citizen all these years—a choice, or perhaps an oversight, that had begun to chafe. At a concert in 2024, she expressed the frustration plainly. "I wish I could vote," she said from the stage. "I'm a Canadian. I'm one of those lousy immigrants." The remark carried both humor and genuine irritation. She had wanted to cast a ballot in American elections and could not. Now she can.

Mitchell was born in Fort Macleod, Alberta, in 1943, and grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where she played early gigs in folk clubs before moving east to Calgary and then Toronto. It was in Toronto that she met Chuck Mitchell, a folk singer from the United States. They married in 1965, and she crossed the border with him. The marriage lasted two years, but by the time it ended, Mitchell had already begun to establish herself as a distinctive voice on the American folk circuit—a place that would become her home, even if her passport never quite caught up.

She released her debut album in 1968 and used the money to move to Los Angeles, settling in Laurel Canyon, the neighborhood that had become a creative hub for musicians and songwriters. There she recorded "Ladies of the Canyon," her first album to achieve gold status. California became her base. She remained there, eventually relocating to Santa Barbara, where she has lived in recent years. For more than fifty years, she built her career, her reputation, and her life in America while holding Canadian citizenship.

Mitchell's recording output slowed considerably after 2007, when she released "Shine," her most recent studio album. A brain aneurysm in 2015 required extensive recovery and kept her largely out of public view for years. But she returned to performing in 2022 with an unannounced set at the Newport Folk Festival, and has since appeared in a series of "Joni Jam" concerts featuring other artists. Her work is being revisited now through a biopic in development by director Cameron Crowe, who began the project in the early 2020s. Meryl Streep has been announced to play Mitchell in the film, a sign of the renewed cultural attention surrounding her legacy.

The timing of Mitchell's citizenship is unclear—whether she applied recently or whether the ceremony simply happened to occur now. What is clear is that the woman who shaped American popular music for six decades, who wrote songs that defined generations, who lived and worked and created in the United States for longer than she lived anywhere else, has finally become a citizen of the country she helped build.