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Dog Eat Dog (Joni Mitchell album)

1985 studio album by Joni Mitchell

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ1091171 ↗
Source-derived summary

Dog Eat Dog is the twelfth studio album by the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released in 1985. It was her second album for Geffen Records.

As with its predecessor Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog moves away from Mitchell's previous folk and jazz influences in favour of 1980s studio pop. The album was a particular departure for Mitchell due to its highly synthetic sound – it was the first (and one of the few albums) on which she plays no guitar and on which she focuses entirely on keyboards (mostly synthesizers and the Fairlight CMI sampler).

Dog Eat Dog also featured an expanded role for Mitchell's bass-playing husband Larry Klein, who not only co-produced and played keyboards, but played a significant part in shaping the album's technological pop sound and also wrote the music for two of the songs. All guitars were played by session musician Michael Landau, using an electric/textural approach very different from Mitchell's own. On later albums, Mitchell gradually returned to a more organic approach similar to her mid-'70s sound.

Recording

The British electronic musician Thomas Dolby co-produced Dog Eat Dog. He and Mitchell clashed in the studio, with Dolby's precise working methods proving incompatible with Mitchell's more freeform approach. Mitchell said: "He'd get excited with some idea and I couldn't get him off the keyboards.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dog Eat Dog (Joni Mitchell album)” as 1985 studio album by Joni Mitchell. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1985—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1985-10. The account is most persuasive where Joni, Mitchell and album can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1985 studio album by Joni Mitchell. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1091171. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dog Eat Dog (Joni Mitchell album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dog Eat Dog (Joni Mitchell album) primary sources, Dog Eat Dog (Joni Mitchell album) archive and Joni research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Dog Eat Dog (Joni Mitchell album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.