This month, Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s Blue celebrated its 50th anniversary. The fourth studio record from the music icon was initially met with tepid reviews, peaking at No. 15 on American charts. But over time, Blue garnered the praise it always deserved, ensconcing itself among the greatest albums of our musical canon.

The roots of Mitchell’s 1971 Blue writhe through the post-war era. Still in her mid-20s, she had already endured a polio epidemic, left her home in the Canadian prairies, found love, born a child, been abandoned, and felt the greatest sorrow a mother can conceive: Unable to raise her daughter, she had given her up.