"Blue" is a song written and produced by Joni Mitchell, who wrote both its music and its lyrics. It is the title track of her 1971 album Blue, released on Reprise on 22 June 1971, where it is the fifth track on side A. Mitchell's original recording is a spare folk rock arrangement built on piano, guitar and dulcimer. The song has been sampled and quoted by several artists: the rapper Mac Dre used its words in "Song 4 U", and Blu, Exile and A.R. Kane also drew on them. It is a key scene in the 2019 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, whose director licensed Mitchell's original recording for the film. Among its covers, Angie Hart recorded an a cappella version with Frente! in 1993, Sarah McLachlan recorded it in 1996, Cat Power released a version in 2008 on the album Jukebox, and Rufus Wainwright's version appeared on a 2019 tribute.
