Songfacts®:

• "Raised On Robbery" is about a prostitute's failed attempt to pick up a client, with the story clouded well enough in cooking metaphors to sneak past the censors of 1970's AM radio.
  
  The song tells a complete story. It starts with a man watching a televised hockey game in a hotel lobby. Singing from the first-person perspective, Joni Mitchell approaches him and attempts to seduce him into coming home with her. One clouded verse identifies that Mitchell isn't merely a woman looking for company but is a "working girl":
  
  I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sittin' on my groceries
  Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipe
  I try and I try, but I can't save a cent
  I'm up after midnight cooking, trying to make my rent
  I'm rough but I'm pleasin', I was raised on robbery
  
  Unless Mitchell was running an after-hours home bakery, "cooking" alludes to something more carnal than culinary. During the song, she makes it all the way through the woman's life story; at the end the man walks out on her, drink unfinished. The song's jangly, upbeat sound belies the sad story underneath.
• Mitchell specifies that the lobby is in the Empire Hotel. Many locations with hotels named "Empire" have laid claim to being the home of the hotel in question. The people of Toronto have long suggested that the song's mention of the Maple Leafs hockey team and a four-lane highway prove that the song is set in their stomping grounds. Mitchell, however, may have disproved that in a roundabout way when she included "Raised On Robbery" on Songs of a Prairie Girl in 2005. In the liner notes, she states that all the album's songs were set in Saskatchewan. Mitchell considers Saskatoon (she moved there at 11) to be her hometown, and the city did have an Empire Hotel in 1974 – one that was located next to a theater, nonetheless. In a post published on Mitchell's official website, Jacqueline Warwick traces the song to the city of Regina, also in Saskatchewan.
• On August 26, 1973, Mitchell recorded "Raised On Robbery" with Neil Young in Hollywood during sessions for Tonight's the Night, Young's sixth studio album. Young, Mitchell, and David Briggs, one of the elite studio musicians known as "the Nashville Cats," all produced the track. The song didn't make it onto Tonight's the Night but was included in Neil Young Archives Volume II: 1972 - 1976, released in 2020. It's also included in the the 50th anniversary edition of Tonight's the Night.
• "Raised On Robbery" was the first single released in anticipation of Mitchell's sixth studio album, Court And Spark, her best seller. She released the single in December 1973, about a month before the January 1974 release of the album.
• Mitchell was primarily a folk musician, so she brought in Robbie Robertson of The Band to play electric guitar and give this song more rock and roll.
• In 1980, Mitchell released a live album titled Shadows and Light. "Raised On Robbery" wasn't included on the main release, but it did appear on the VHS version (and, later, DVD). The song was also included on the Hits compilation in 1996 and on Songs of a Prairie Girl in 2005.
• The Trans-Canada Highwaymen are a super group including Stephen Page (Barenaked Ladies), Chris Murphy (Sloan), Craig Northey (Odds), and Moe Berg (The Pursuit of Happiness). In 2023 they covered "Raised On Robbery" on their Explosive Hits Vol. 1 album.
• The song wasn't a big hit - it went to #65 in the US and #51 in Mitchell's native Canada - but it's a fan favorite and was one of Joni's most-played songs in concert.