Songfacts®:

• The dreamy acoustic layering of this song belies the anxiety of its narrator. Gripped by "frightened silence," Joni Mitchell witnesses a disturbing scene at this LA party.
  
  Photo beauty gets attention, then her eye paint's running down
  She's got a rose in her teeth and a lampshade crown
  One minute she's so happy, then she's crying on someone's knee
  
  The song's source, according to Jack Nicholson's then-partner Anjelica Huston, was a dinner party at which Dutch model Apollonia van Ravenstein had a dramatic meltdown. "(Apollonia) has been crying that night - laughing and crying, it was hard to figure out which or why," Huston recounted in her 2014 memoir Watch Me. "She had balanced a lamp side on her head; tears were pouring down her cheeks."
  
  It was later revealed that Nicholson had slept with van Ravenstein.
• "People's Parties" is the fourth track on Court And Spark, Mitchell's most commercially successful release of her distinguished career. It reached #2 in the United States and #1 in Canada and eventually received a double platinum certification by the RIAA. The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll voted Court and Spark the Best Album of the Year.
• Mitchell used jazz musicians to back her on Court And Spark. On this track they included drummer John Guerin and guitarist Larry Carlton from jazz fusion The L.A. Express and bassist Wilton Felder from the jazz group The Crusaders.