Janis Joplin remains one of rock music’s most powerful vocalists, but beneath the grit of her voice was always a hint of emotional fragility. Influenced by soulful powerhouses like Big Mama Thornton and Bessie Smith, Joplin bought a worn-down blues sensibility to her music that was often overlooked by her bad-girl persona.
A dependence on drugs and alcohol and her involvement with the counter-culture scene in San Francisco meant audiences saw her as wild and rebellious, but when you listen to ‘Kosmic Blues’, the rock and roll bravado slips, and you see how emotionally charged her songwriting was. The vocals are raw and gritty, with her signature warble coming out full force as she cries: “I said they’re always gonna hurt you, I said they’re always gonna let you down, I said everywhere, every day, every day.”
On the track from 1969’s I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, Joplin tackles hope and despair, navigating her relationships with consistent effort but watching on helplessly as things go wrong anyway. Joplin explained once that: “‘Kozmic Blues’ just means that no matter what you do, man, you get shot down anyway.”
Although Joplin didn’t pen many songs on her own, she wrote this one alongside her producer, Gabriel Mekler. Explaining the process to Rolling Stone, she said: “I can’t write a song unless I’m really traumatic, emotional, and I’ve gone through a few changes, I’m very down.”
Mekler, aware of her emotional state, let Joplin live in his Los Angeles home during the recording sessions. Reaching a dark place had obvious benefits on her songwriting, but he was aware that mining her past heartbreaks would leave her vulnerable and wanted to offer his house to her to keep her away from drug use.
It’s a raw account of pain and frustration, and she was said to enter a trance-like state when performing it, digging deep to connect with the anguish that led her to pen the song. Her performances from Monterey and Woodstock highlight how difficult the songs could be for her to perform live. Her first album as a solo artist outside of her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the song’s name also inspired the album’s title.
The title is intentionally misspelt, which Joplin said was done to take the edge off its serious subject matter. “It’s too down and lonely a trip to be taken seriously,” she once explained. “It’s like a joke on itself.” It feels like another example of that ‘tough-chick’ persona, a self-protective move to stop the hurt ever setting in too deep by finding the humour in it.
It remains a perfect example of the complexities of Joplin, a deeply emotional artist who was often afraid of confronting her own pain.
