Alana Haim thought her mother “was Joni Mitchell” as a kid.
The singer and her sibling bandmates Danielle and Este have opened up on their love for the ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ musician after growing up listening to her album ‘Miles of Aisles’.
Alana told Rolling Stone magazine: “That was pretty much the only CD that was in our mom’s car – I don’t think she knew how to change the CD, so every time she turned on the car, that’s what would play.
“And because I was so young, and because my mom knew all the songs and would sing every word, I thought my mom was Joni Mitchell at one point.
“She knew every single run and every single melody on that record. It was the most inspiring thing.”
Haim as a group have been inspired by Joni’s music, and Alana has peeled back layers of her songwriting over the years.
She added: “We got the gift of listening to her at such a young age, but as a six-year-old listening to ‘Miles of Aisles’, you don’t really understand what the lyrics mean.
“And then we kind of grew up with her. Every year her songs take on new meanings, and I think that’s the beauty of Joni – discovering new things in her music.
“I could listen to a song like ‘A Case of You’ when I was in my early 20s, and that song has taken on a whole new meaning now that I’m almost 30.”
The ‘Want You Back’ hitmakers also revealed how her songs were an escape when their “strict” father Mordechai ‘Moti’ Haim wouldn’t let them out to parties.
Danielle said: “‘People’s Parties’ encapsulated what our social life was like, because our dad was strict.
“He wouldn’t let us go out that much, so I would be in my room listening to ‘People’s Parties’, dreaming that I was at some faraway party on a bender.”