Judy Collins Confirms New Album ‘Spellbound’ & Shares Single

Judy Collins announced a new album, Spellbound, set to arrive on February 25 and available for preorder. The folk legend also shared the LP’s lead single, “When I Was A Girl In Colorado.”

Spellbound is Judy Collins’ 29th studio album and remarkably the first LP from the renowned singer-songwriter made up entirely of original material. Collins co-produced the new record with Alan Silverman and also worked closely with frequent collaborator, singer-songwriter and guitarist Ari Hest (Collins and Hest’s 2016 collaborative album Silver Skies Blue garnered the duo a Grammy nomination). Musicians on the record also include multi-instrumentalist Thad DeBrock, bassist Zev Katz and drummer Doug Yowell.

While Spellbound may be Collins’ first album of all original material, Judy is no stranger to the muses as an extremely talented songwriter as well as a skilled interpreter of songs by Joni Mithcell, Bob Dylan, Steven Sondheim, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and more. Collins dedicates Spellbound to the latter two folk legends on that list. The journey to Judy’s first album of all original material began in 2016 when she started writing a poem a day. A number of Spellbound’s 12 tracks were sculpted from that body of work including “Shipwrecked Mariner” and “Wild With Mist.” Collins rounded out the rest of LP with free time on her hands as the pandemic took hold.

“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,” Collins told Billboard in a recent interview. “It’s the only thing I was doing.”

“They say after the plague came the Renaissance,” Judy added in a press release. “Now felt like the perfect time to make this record because, after all that’s happened in the world, we need something beautiful and inspirational to lift us up.”

Along with beautiful and inspirational, Spellbound is also autobiographical. Judy touches on her early ‘60s Greenwich Village folk scene days on “So Alive” and pays further tribute to New York on “City of Awakening.” Her activism is well documented in her ode to anti-war monk/author Thomas Merton. Judy also goes back to her younger days with the title track, which speaks of her love of nature and its allure as the singer-songwriter almost became a park ranger.

Additionally, the lead single “When I Was A Girl In Colorado” speaks of Judy’s childhood growing up in the Centennial State. Listen below:

Spellbound Tracklist:

1. Spellbound
2. Grand Canyon
3. So Alive
4. Hell on Wheels
5. Shipwrecked Mariner
6. When I Was A Girl In Colorado
7. Thomas Merton
8. Wild with Mist
9. Gilded Rooms
10. Prairie Dreams
11. City of Awakening
12. Arizona