You never know what you got til' it's gone take Paradise and put up a parking lot. Joani or Carly?

Joni Mitchell
"Paved paradise and put up a parking lot"

Joni Mitchell wrote the song, "Big Yellow Taxi", which contained the words, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Her song is full of poetic metaphors about environmental destruction.

In an interview with Alan McDougall in the early 1970s, Mitchell said:

I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart... this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song.

Other lines include "Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now"  and, "They took all the trees, and put 'em in a tree museum / And charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em", referring to botanical gardens as attempts to save endangered species.

This post was edited by inky at June 6, 2019 4:19 PM MDT

Take Paradise and it's all Joni Mitchell.  

You have your answer and I have tears. :(  
Even thinking of this song makes me cry.

The line is "they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot".