The Hissing of Summer Lawns

The seventh album continued the jazz-rock of Court and Spark and brought the first Moog and ARP synthesizers into her work. The Jungle Line is credited as the first commercially released song to include a sample, a loop of The Drummers of Burundi. Mitchell told Musician magazine in 1983 that she took the loop from a Burundi warriors passage. Her cover painting shows men carrying a snake over Beverly Hills, with her own house shaded blue.

It reached 4 in the United States, her last top-10 album, and its only single, In France They Kiss on Main Street, reached 66. Reviews at first were harsh. Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone called it a great collection of pop poems with a distracting soundtrack. Prince said in 1985 that it was the last album he loved all the way through, and Pitchfork's Jessica Hopper called it certainly her most timeless. Rolling Stone placed it 258th in its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.