# Joanna Newsom
**Joanna Newsom** is an American harpist, singer, and songwriter whose music joins orchestral composition, folk, and long-form songwriting; she has released four albums, from *The Milk-Eyed Mender* (2004) to *Divers* (2015), all on the Chicago indie label Drag City.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) Her primary instrument is an orchestral harp, her singing voice is distinctive and frequently described as ethereal or warbling, and her records have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Debut | *The Milk-Eyed Mender*, released 2004 on Drag City; twelve songs with harp as the main accompaniment[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) • [3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/04/string-theory-4) |
| Second album | *Ys* (2006), five songs of seven to nearly seventeen minutes with orchestral arrangements by Van Dyke Parks[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) |
| Third album | *Have One on Me* (2010), a three-CD album[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) |
| Fourth album | *Divers* (2015), eleven tracks with a combined runtime of about 54 minutes[4](https://stereogum.com/1837983/premature-evaluation-joanna-newsom-divers/reviews/premature-evaluation) |
| Training | Classically trained harpist and self-taught pianist; attended Mills College to study composition[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) |
| Instrument | Lyon & Healy pedal harp (a style 11 on the recordings discussed in a 2006 interview)[5](https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/) |
| Outside music | Narrator in Paul Thomas Anderson's 2014 film of *Inherent Vice*; married the comic actor Andy Samberg in 2013[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) |
## Beginnings
Newsom began playing the harp around age nine or ten and did not sing for years afterward.[6](https://www.avclub.com/joanna-newsom-1798208384) In 2002, she began handing out copies of "Walnut Whales," an eight-song homemade CD with a photocopied cover and her e-mail address, unicorntears2000@yahoo.com, printed on the back.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) She had ties to the Bay Area indie scene and played keyboards in a garage-rock band, but the homemade recordings sounded radically out of time: a singer-songwriter who was also, more peculiarly, a harpist.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) That year, the singer and songwriter [Will Oldham](https://www.edgepedia.org/will-oldham) heard her recordings and brought her on tour.[3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/04/string-theory-4)
By the time she recorded *The Milk-Eyed Mender*, she was already a seasoned instrumentalist: a self-taught pianist and trained harpist who attended Mills College to study composition. She had been singing for only about a year, and at times she hollered her lyrics, confident the sound she made could never be classically beautiful.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) The album made her a polarizing figure; some listeners swooned at her presence, while others balked at her bracing voice and her taste for exalted language.[5](https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/)
## The albums
*The Milk-Eyed Mender* (2004) is built around Newsom's harp and voice, with minimal arrangements and concise pop structures.[5](https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/) It sold about 200,000 copies.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview) A writer for *The New Yorker* described the twelve songs as "odd and wonderful music, as cheerful and melodically sure-footed as it is affected and fey," and noted that she plays the harp with the utilitarian clarity of a piano player in a band, plucking bass notes with her left hand while exploring chords in the upper register with her right.[3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/04/string-theory-4)
**Ys, 2006.** Her second album expanded the format dramatically: five songs, each between seven and nearly seventeen minutes, backed at times by a symphony orchestra arranged by the pop composer [Van Dyke Parks](https://www.edgepedia.org/van-dyke-parks).[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) The title, pronounced "eess," is the name of an island in Breton mythology.[3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/04/string-theory-4) Newsom has said the record's four main songs deal with four very large events in a single year of her life, with the fifth, "Only Skin," exploring the connections between them; she did not set out to write a concept album, but found it impossible to tell these stories in shorter forms.[5](https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/) She gave Parks a written account of how she wanted the record to sound, and he drafted the orchestral parts; "Sawdust and Diamonds" was left unarranged because no orchestral version ever worked gracefully.[5](https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/) *Ys* sold about 250,000 copies.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview)
**Voice injury and Have One on Me.** The *Ys* tour, which included dates with a full orchestra, strengthened Newsom's voice while also damaging it. She developed nodes on her vocal cords, treated them with a months-long vow of silence (she wore a button telling strangers she could not talk), and followed a regimen of daily warmups prescribed by a singing coach recommended by Björk. When the rehabilitation was complete, she found she still sounded like herself, only a bit less squeaky.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) She showed the rebuilt voice on *Have One on Me* (2010), a three-CD album that resembles, in one reviewer's phrase, an unpretentious modern form: the breakup album. Its songs include one addressing a modern incarnation of [Bluebeard](https://www.edgepedia.org/bluebeard), the mythical wife-killer, and another evoking a pregnancy's end.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) A thesis account records the album as eighteen tracks with a run time of 124 minutes.[7](https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=ucin1695720355864253&disposition=inline)
**Divers, 2015.** Her fourth album arrived on 23 October 2015 after a five-year hiatus, announced in early August alongside a video for the single "Sapokanikan" directed by [Paul Thomas Anderson](https://www.edgepedia.org/paul-thomas-anderson), who had cast her as the narrator of his film version of *Inherent Vice*.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview) • [1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle) The eleven tracks run about 54 minutes in total, a notable compression after the three-disc *Have One on Me*.[4](https://stereogum.com/1837983/premature-evaluation-joanna-newsom-divers/reviews/premature-evaluation) Newsom composed the arrangements with eight other musicians, including Nico Muhly, Ryan Francesconi, David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, and her brother Pete.[8](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21097-divers/) The album's preoccupation is the passage of time and the fear of losing a loved one; Newsom explained after her 2013 marriage that love "contains death inside of it, and then that death contains love inside of it."[8](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21097-divers/)
## Reception and style
**A polarizing voice.** Reviewers have struggled to describe Newsom's singing since her debut. Comparisons to Marge and [Lisa Simpson](https://www.edgepedia.org/lisa-simpson), Björk, and "a small, asthmatic child" appeared in early coverage, and Newsom herself said much of the writing about her music was done "through a lens of straight-up sexism and, in other cases, just a coding of feminising of things."[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview) The Los Angeles Times reported in 2007 that since *The Milk-Eyed Mender* she had dealt with a stream of words such as elfin, childlike, chirpy, and twee that diminished the complexity of her music.[9](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-12-et-newsom12-story.html)
**Lyrics and composition.** Newsom's lyrics mix archaic vocabulary with modern usage, and they have grown more intricate over her career; she says a degree of obfuscation is now almost expected of her, and that her most dedicated fans, whom she calls "the delvers," reliably find the references she buries in her lines.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview) "Sapokanikan" took more than two months of reading around subjects from American history to the Romantics, then a couple of weeks on the final lyrics.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview) Her style blends madrigals, minimalism, art song, and flashes of pop, and she does not write conventional songs with bridges, refrains, and 4/4 beats; the rhythms tend to come from the harp rather than the drum kit.[10](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/joanna-newsom-unconventional-in-every-way/2015/12/11/abb8f036-a010-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html)
**Standing in indie music.** Newsom's success has been read as a rebuttal to the idea that audiences have lost patience with complexity: she can take five years between records knowing the return will be an event.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview) Retrospective commentary places her harp-based work among the innovations of early-2000s indie, alongside [Sufjan Stevens](https://www.edgepedia.org/sufjan-stevens)'s orchestration and [Animal Collective](https://www.edgepedia.org/animal-collective)'s harmonizing.[11](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/08/indie-rock-such-great-heights-book-review/684041/) She has remained on Drag City throughout her career while shedding the "freak folk" label that first attached to her.[1](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle)
## References
1. [Kelefa Sanneh, "Precious Mettle" (review of Divers), The New Yorker, October 19, 2015](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/precious-mettle)
2. [Tim Lewis, "Joanna Newsom: 'It was a tonic to know I'm not insane'", The Guardian, October 18, 2015](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/18/joanna-newsom-it-was-tonic-to-know-not-insane-interview)
3. [Sasha Frere-Jones, "String Theory", The New Yorker, December 4, 2006](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/04/string-theory-4)
4. ["Premature Evaluation: Joanna Newsom Divers", Stereogum, October 2015](https://stereogum.com/1837983/premature-evaluation-joanna-newsom-divers/reviews/premature-evaluation)
5. [Brian Howe, "Joanna Newsom" (interview), Pitchfork, November 19, 2006](https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/)
6. ["Joanna Newsom", The A.V. Club interview](https://www.avclub.com/joanna-newsom-1798208384)
7. [Ohio Link ETD thesis on Joanna Newsom (University of Cincinnati)](https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=ucin1695720355864253&disposition=inline)
8. [Laura Snapes, "Joanna Newsom: Divers Album Review", Pitchfork, October 19, 2015](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21097-divers/)
9. [Ann Powers, "Joanna Newsom's voice in just the right place", Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2007](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-12-et-newsom12-story.html)
10. [Mark Jenkins, "Joanna Newsom, unconventional in every way", The Washington Post, December 11, 2015](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/joanna-newsom-unconventional-in-every-way/2015/12/11/abb8f036-a010-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html)
11. ["The Music of Millennial Idealism", The Atlantic, August 29, 2025](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/08/indie-rock-such-great-heights-book-review/684041/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Music › Musicians and ensembles › Individual musical biographies › Blues, folk, and roots musicians › Contemporary folk singer-songwriters › Contemporary indie folk artists*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license