"Both Sides, Now" is one of the best-known songs of Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. First recorded by Judy Collins, it appeared on the U.S. singles chart during the fall of 1968.
The next year it was included on Mitchell's album Clouds (which was named after a lyric from the song).
It has since been recorded by dozens of artists, including Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson and Herbie Hancock. Mitchell herself re-recorded the song, with an orchestral arrangement, on her 2000 album Both Sides Now.
This version was featured in the film Love Actually (2003). In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked "Both Sides, Now" at #171 on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Mitchell wrote "Both Sides, Now" in March 1967, inspired by a passage in Henderson the Rain King, a 1959 novel by Saul Bellow.
"I was reading Saul Bellow's 'Henderson the Rain King' on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did."
"Both Sides, Now" appears in the album "Joni Mitchell: Live at the Second Fret 1966" (2014, All Access Records, AACD0120), a live performance on November 17, 1966, from The Second Fret in Philadelphia, PA, which was broadcast live by WRTI, Temple University's radio station. This suggests that Mitchell wrote the song before March 1967.
Shortly after Mitchell wrote the song, Judy Collins recorded the first commercially released version for her 1967 Wildflowers album. In October 1968 the same version was released as a single, reaching #8 on the U.S. pop singles charts by December. It reached #6 in Canada. In early 1969 it won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.
The record peaked at #3 on Billboard's Easy Listeningsurvey and "Both Sides, Now" has become one of Collins' signature songs. Mitchell disliked Collins' recording of the song, despite the publicity that its success generated for Mitchell's own career.
The Collins version is featured as the end title music of the 2018 supernatural horror film Hereditary.