Songfacts®:

• "I Don't Know Where I Stand" is Joni Mitchell's diary-like look at the uncertainty of a new romance. Caught in the awkward space of falling for someone without knowing if the feeling is returned, she writes "I love you" on a slip of paper in her finest handwriting. But the note goes unsent: as the title makes clear, the writer doesn't know where she stands.
• Mitchell's official website describes the song as an acknowledgment of "the complexities and doubts new love brings" while celebrating its early excitement. She gently mocks her own romantic tendencies even as she gives in to them, capturing that slightly ridiculous feeling of being crazy about someone without having any idea if they like you back.
• Mitchell wrote and demoed "I Don't Know Where I Stand" in May 1967, recording it in North Carolina alongside "Tin Angel," another track that later appeared on her second album, Clouds. The timing caught her during a huge transition. She had recently divorced fellow folk singer Chuck Mitchell and moved from Detroit to New York City, launching her solo career on the East Coast folk-club circuit.
  
  The long-distance phone call in the lyrics and the line about being "alone in California" fit this unsettled stretch of her life. Mitchell was newly single and cautiously exploring a fresh relationship without knowing where it was going. The song predates her well-documented relationships with Leonard Cohen, David Crosby and Graham Nash. The identity of the man who inspired it has never been publicly confirmed, making it one of her more private early love songs.
• Mitchell wrote and copyrighted the song herself, publishing it through her company, Crazy Crow Music.
• Fairport Convention recorded the song before Mitchell released her own rendition. The British folk-rock group put it on their self-titled debut album in June 1968, nearly a year before Mitchell's version came out on Clouds in May 1969.