Dog Eat Dog

Dog Eat Dog is the 12th 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 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. Then I'd feel bad. I'd think, oh God, I understand. He's on a creative roll. But he can't because if he does that he'll decorate me right off my own project. He may be able to do it faster. He may even be able to do it better, but the fact is it won't really be my music." Dolby wrote in his memoir that he was "probably too much of a brat, with my own blinkered way of working". On the original issue of the album, Dolby was credited as a co-producer, but on the version released as part of the 2003 Mitchell box set The Complete Geffen Recordings albums he is only credited with "sound file assistance".