Judy Collins Albums Ranked

Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is a Grammy Award-winning American singer and songwriter with a career spanning over 60 years. She has known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk music, show tunes, pop music, rock and roll, and standards) for her social activism, and for the clarity of her voice. Collins has released 28 studio albums, 4 live albums, numerous compilation albums, and 4-holiday albums. Collins experienced the biggest success of her career with her recording of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” from her best-selling 1975 album Judith. The single charted on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1975 and then again in 1977, spending 27 non-consecutive weeks on the chart and earning Collins a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, as well as a Grammy Award for Sondheim for Song of the Year. In 2017, Collins’ rendition of the song “Amazing Grace” was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or artistically significant”. In 2019, Judy Collins scored her first #1 album on an American Billboard Chart with Winter Stories at the age of 80 years old. Here are all of Judy Collins’ albums ranked.

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10. Who Knows Where The Time Goes, 1968

“This effort is easily the single best album in Judy Collins’ long and illustrious career. From the opening phrases of “Hello, Horray!” to the final chords of “Pretty Polly”, this brilliant effort never stops delighting and amazing the listener with its unique combination of brilliant song writing and selection, vocal performances, and musical scoring and accompaniment. This one went off all the charts, folks, as her first effort after the blockbuster success she experienced with “Both Sides Now”.”

9. Sanity And Grace, 1989

“Judy Collins has a spectacular voice and the selections in Colors of the Day show it off beautifully. I have loved listening to this album since it first came out as an LP, and I love it just as much now. No one who enjoys listening to Judy sing would be disappointed in any way with this CD.”

8. The Judy Collins Concert, 1964

“This album was recorded in 1964. :It is laced with political undertones of the day. In 1964 I was twelve years old. I had not heard of Judy Collins. I was immersed in the music take over of the British invasion – Beatles. To return to 1964 through the music of Judy Collins is quite the trip! The music she preformed on this album threads through her career – protest, folk, etc. This album rings of the Joan Baez,Bob Dylan, Buffy St. Marie protesters. This album is worth buying, it is history. It is good music.”

7. Judith, 1975

“Judith, Judy Collins’s 12th album not counting anthologies, was her biggest album ever in sales, but also her last album to make the top twenty. It was fueled by her hit version of Send In the Clowns, a rare single that was a chart hit in two non consecutive years, 1975 and 1977, being a bigger hit the second time around. It’s no wonder. The seamless blend of Judy’s remarkable soprano voice and the lush orchestration by Jonathan Tunick create a perfect blend, a soft, inviting sound that you can practically sink into. Many people had already recorded the song, but Judy made it her own.”

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6. Fifth Album, 1965

“Judy Collins’ simply titled fifth album seems downright subdued next to some of the ones immediately following, with their increasing diversity of styles and instrumentations. Some of the songs here are accompanied solely by her own guitar playing, and none have more than a small band as backup. The choice of songs very much reflects the tenor of the times (1964) with several of the songs being strong pleas for civil rights that, alas, still seem relevant today, while others (“The Coming of the Roads”) are very forward-looking in their expression of what are now universal ecological concerns.”

5. In My Life, 1966

“Judy Collins caught a lot of flack from critics and fans for her sixth album, In My Life. There were many reasons, most of them irrelevant. Time had already seen Judy evolve from a singer of traditional folk songs to a singer of new songs composed by members of the folk revival. Her first two albums had three new songs and twenty-two traditional; the third and fourth, twenty-four new songs and three traditional; the fifth album had only one traditional song out of twelve. So to call Judy Collins a folksinger at this point was a misnomer. She’d always had eclectic tastes and since her move to Greenwich Village in early ’63 she had become a voice for many of the talented songwriters living there. Nevertheless, most of these songs sounded like folk music, and her accompaniments were acoustic guitars and bass. In My Life would throw all that overboard, choosing a wider range of material and almost completely abandoning acoustic guitar arrangements in favor of small instrumental groupings.”

4. #3, 1963

“With a couple of exceptions, the songs on this album were written by contemporary songwriters, such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ewan MacColl, Bob Gibson, Hamilton Camp, and Fred Hellerman. (There are also a couple co-written by Shel Silverstein; they’re not humorous, but are actually pretty powerful antiwar songs.) For the most part, however, the songs sound very traditional… for example, we have what I assume must be a very early effort by Bob Dylan, “Farewell” (not “Restless Farewell”), which is a slightly reworked version of “The Leaving of Liverpool”. I don’t know whether they were specifically selected for that reason, or whether this is simply a reflection of the tendency (starting to fade out at that point) for folk songwriters to be focused on “authenticity” — the older a song sounded, the better.”

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3. Golden Apples Of The Sun, 1962

“Great to hear early albums by this singer . These early albums have a harder sound to her voice and more like Joan Baez singing protest songs . Plenty of classic songs , love her voice .”

2. A Maid Of Constant Sorrow, 1961

“The opening track, the title tune of her first album “A Maid of Constant Sorrow” sets the tone with its quite un-nerving acoustic guitar and Collins’ deep voice. The first side of that album is quite remarkable in its dark depths, especially in the intense murder tale “Tim Evans”, where Collins’ throaty vocals creates an atmosphere that approaches one of rage. “The Prickleye Bush” is almost as good, and even the seemingly upbeat “O Daddy Be Gay” on the second side possesses emotional intensity in an era when artistry was considered more significant.”

1. Wildflowers, 1967

“Judy Collins has enjoyed a lengthy career in music – nearly six decades, by my reckoning, and she is still a wonderful singer. This album, from 1967, is one of a series of excellent albums that she made for Elektra Records in the late 60s. Always as much an interpreter as a composer in her own right, she calls on the songs of Joni Mitchell (‘Both Sides Now, ‘Michael From The Mountains’), Leonard Cohen (‘Sisters of Mercy’, ‘Priests’, and ‘Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’), Jacques Brel (‘The Song of Old Lovers’), and an old Italian Ballad, and offers up three fine originals. The arrangements, by Joshua Rifkin, are immaculately tailored to support Collins’ peerless vocals, and Producer Mark Abramson colors the music with that great, unobtrusive but classic Elektra Records sound of the era. I bought the mono ‘limited yellow vinyl’ 50th-anniversary edition of ‘Wildflowers’, but in truth, this is music that is utterly timeless in its rendition – a set of almost routine brilliance from a fine singer, who brought her own interpretive skills to then relatively unknown songwriters. Judy Collins was, and is, one of the finest vocalists of the post-war era, and this album is one of her best.”