Released to deservedly withering reviews upon its release in 1985, Dog Eat Dog finds Mitchell floundering. Like so many of her boomer contemporaries, Mitchell found the eighties especially unkind, and was not immune to the struggle of trying to remain relevant as a musical mass-cult embraced synths and MIDI en masse. On the Thomas Dolby-produced Dog Eat Dog, Mitchell duets with Michael McDonald on the saccharine “Good Friends” (actually one of the album’s better songs), abides palm-muted guitar licks that sound like they were donated by White Lion or the BulletBoys, and nobly attempts to get with the program(ming), orchestra hits and all. But close listening reveals Mitchell’s discomfort and unwillingness to fully embrace the plastic, homogenous sounds of the day; she often sounds unsteady and coerced. “Fuck it!” she sings on the unbearable “Tax Free,” “Tonight I’m going dancing/ with the drag queens and the punks/ Big beat deliver me from this sanctimonious skunk.” If only she’d allowed some of those colorful characters to wield some musical influence over this frigid, desultory album.