Janis Joplin

The Essential Janis Joplin was mostly well received, with critics calling it an excellent overview of Joplin's music. AllMusic critic Richie Unterberger stated it has "all the songs fans and critics would consider milestones in [Joplin's] career", believing the substitution of substitutions of lesser known music by Joplin "might rankle some consumers expecting to hear the most common ones".[3]

Writing for Rolling Stone, Barry Walters notes it is "accurately named and better than other, similarly titled compilations", concluding it "gets the balance right for everyone but collectors and completists".[5] Writing for PopMatters, their staff believed it is "presumably for listeners who want more than a single disc of Janis but not more than two".[7] The staff of Billboard states "Assembled here are blazing live cuts [...] and canonized classics", believing that "This is the sound of rock'n'roll's immortal pulse.