Judy Collins to release 'Spellbound' in February, her first album entirely written by her

Cleopatra Records

Folk legend Judy Collins has been making albums for over 60 years, but for the first time ever, the 82-year-old singer will be releasing a record entirely made up of songs she has written.

Spellbound, which will be released on February 25, features 12 recently composed folk tunes, plus a new version of her 1990 gem, “The Blizzard.”

Collins tells Billboard that the project began coming together in 2016, after she tasked herself with writing a poem a day for 90 days, which, at her husband’s prompting, turned into a year.

Then, after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Judy says, “my job was to sit down at the piano and write a poem that day or try to finish the ones that were sitting there — if anything spoke to me as a song, write it. It’s the only thing I was doing.”

In the songs, Collins reflects on various aspects and periods of her life, including being part of early-’60s folk scene in Greenwich Village, traveling around the U.S. as a young woman, and her love of her longtime home of New York City.

“I thought I should write a script around it,” Collins jokes about the collection of songs. “It could very well be a musical, a history of my life.”

Her nostalgic tune “When I Was a Girl in Colorado” has been released as an advance digital single, and an animated video for the song has debuted at Collins’ official YouTube channel.

Judy tells Billboard that she has plenty more songs written, so a Spellbound II may be on the horizon. She also is planning a children’s record, another project with frequent collaborator Ari Hest and, possibly, a new duets album.

Collins also has dozens of 2022 concerts scheduled.

Here’s the Spellbound track list:

“Spellbound”
“Grand Canyon”
“So Alive”
“Hell on Wheels”
“Shipwrecked Mariner”
“When I Was a Girl in Colorado”
“Thomas Merton”
“Wild with Mist”
“Gilded Rooms”
“Prairie Dreams”
“City of Awakening”
“Arizona”