Click here to listen to Bjork's version of Boho Dance

Click here to listen to Emmylou Harris' version of The Magdalene Laundries

Click here to listen to Sufjan Stevens' version of Free Man in Paris

Click here to listen to k. d. lang's version of Help Me

A Joni Mitchell tribute has brought together some of music’s biggest names.

Bjork, Annie Lennox, Elvis Costello, Prince and James Taylor will all perform on the first major Mitchell tribute album to be released on April 23.

They will be joined by Sufjan Stevens, Caetano Veloso, Brad Mehldau, Cassandra Wilson, Sarah McLachlan, Emmylou Harris and k.d. lang.

The project was started in the late Nineties but was never completed.

In 2004, executive producer and Nonesuch Records President Bob Hurwitz came across the unfinished album and resuscitated the project.

Although the contributing artists are music industry heavy-weights, many have confessed to being star-struck and nervous at the thought of covering the legendary mucisian's tracks.

Here, they share their thoughts.

Bjork

It is hard to even begin to talk about what Joni Mitchell means to me. The first record of hers I discovered was Don Juan´s Daughter; I was around fourteen, fifteen and I knew it by heart (still do, every instrument, every noise, every word). I would love to cover sometime some of the songs of that album but they might be too sacred for me, too immaculate for me even to be able to suggest that they might be done in any other way. At that age my love for her was very intuitive and limitless with total ignorance of her meaning in North America in the hippy era, for example. I guess now later when I am a bit more knowledgeable about foreigners and history and context and such things I understand better her importance to the world and why she made such an impact on a teenage girl in Iceland (who had never left the island at that point, actually).

Annie Lennox

I pretty much doubt that I would have gone on to become a singer songwriter if I hadn’t encountered Joni Mitchell. The expression of her extraordinary artistic powers gave me the blueprint and inspiration to pursue my own creative calling. (A fairly audacious enterprise indeed.) Joni’s voice and songs have haunted me ever since the moment I first heard them in the early Seventies. The poetic genius of her lyrical imagery tangled with my brain, and I was challenged to try to follow suit. Truth be known... there is no one who can come even near. But that’s OK. We all have to find our own authentic voices! I’d like to offer my version of Ladies of the Canyon as an homage to you, Joni. Thank you for the gift you have given so eloquently.

Elvis Costello

Edith and the Kingpin always seemed to me to have a cinematic quality. I tried to write an orchestration that underscored many of the images in the lyric.

Acknowledging Joni Mitchell’s collaboration with Charles Mingus, there is a musical allusion to Mingus’ Better Git It In Your Soul during the verse that begins, "Edith in his bed...”

The arrangement was written eight years ago but the recording was completely live in now the defunct Westside Studio, London. The ensemble; Bass Clarinet, Bb clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Alto Flute, Flugel Horn, French Horns, Double Bass, and Vibraphone was conducted by myself, as I sang the song. You can probably tell that I did not use a baton!

Caetano Veloso

It was an American friend named David Linger who suggested that I pay attention to this woman Joni Mitchell and her music. This was in London, where I lived in exile for two-and-a-half years. Soon I was standing pretty close to the stage of the Isle of Wight Festival, seeing the young lady David had talked about, a dulcimer on her lap, reacting to an overexcited fan in the audience to “give us some respect”, then resuming her singing with this incredible high pitched voice. Later I heard recordings that showed how miraculously musical that voice was. Back in Brazil, eventually I was amazed by her Mingus record, filled with loose guitar strings that seemed to x-ray Mingus’s bass timbres. Over the years, through choice or chance, I would go back to her musical personality.

Emmylou Harris

Joni’s songs have always seemed to come from a deep personal well, but on Magdalene Laundries she channels the poignant voice of another – a young girl, angry and defiant in the face of her tragic short life. It is an extraordinary tour de force and I’m honored to sing it on this marvelous tribute to one of our greatest, most enduring artists.

A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (Nonesuch Records) is released on April 23.

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