April 7, 1951 – Janis Eddy Fink:
“I learned the truth at seventeen, that love was meant for beauty queens, and high school girls with clear skinned smiles, who married young and then retired.”
I purchased my first Janis Ian single, Society’s Child, at 14 years old, brought to my attention by a high school friend. It is a song about an interracial romance forbidden by a girl’s mother and frowned upon by her peers and teachers. It was released three times between 1965 to 1967. It finally became a big hit on its third release after Leonard Bernstein featured the song on a television special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.
After Bernstein’s show, Verve Records started heavily promoting Society’s Child and some radio stations started playing it. But just as many radio stations refused to play the song. Ian started to receive hate mail and death threats and a radio station in Atlanta that played it was a victim of arson. In the summer of 1967, Society’s Child reached Number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the single sold a million copies. The single was in the Top 10 in many cities, but owing to resistance in many radio markets, it suffered the fate of several other controversial pop hits of the 1960s.
Ian grew up in East Orange, NJ, in a neighborhood predominantly populated by Black Americans and she was one of very few mixed-race kids in her school. Ian:
“I saw it from both ends. I was seeing it from the end of all the civil rights stuff on the television and radio, of white parents being incensed when their daughters would date black men, and I saw it around me when black parents were worried about their sons or daughters dating white girls or boys. I don’t think I knew where I was going when I started it, but when I hit the second line, ‘face is clean and shining black as night’, it was obvious where the song was going. I don’t think I made a conscious decision to have the girl cop out in the end, it just seemed like that would be the logical thing at my age, because how can you buck school and society and your parents, and make yourself an outcast forever?”
Her 1975 Grammy Award-winning song At Seventeen is a bittersweet commentary on teenage bullying. It sounds like it could have been written in our current era with its commentary on society’s beauty standards, adolescent cruelty, and the illusion of popularity. Listen to it again. It sounds fresh.
Ian wrote At Seventeen in 1973, she has said that the song was inspired by a newspaper article about a former teenage debutante who learned the hard way that being popular did not solve all her problems.
Promoting At Seventeen presented a challenge because at five minutes, it is longer than most radio hits and it is packed with lyrics. Columbia Records and Ian decided that their best chance at marketing the song was to promote it to women, which wasn’t easy with radio stations controlled by men. Ian did the daytime talk shows for a year before booking a gig on The Tonight Show. Her appearance with Johnny Carson and the performance of the song really helped it to take off.
At Seventeen was Ian’s first hit single since Society’s Child eight years earlier. The radio version omitted the instrumental verse and chorus because it was considered too long for radio stations to play it. It went to Number One on the Adult Contemporary chart and Number Three on the Pop Singles chart. It was the Number Two on the Adult Contemporary charts in 1975 behind only Midnight Blue by Melissa Manchester. It won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1976, beating out Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and Helen Reddy and was nominated for Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year.
Ian performed At Seventeen as a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1975.
The song’s album, Between The Lines, also went to Number One and it sold over one million copies. On Valentine’s Day 1976, Ian received hundreds of cards; sweet because in the lyrics to At Seventeen, she sings that she never received any as a teenager.
In the 30 Rock episode The Break-Up, Tina Fey‘s character sings At Seventeen at a karaoke club. It is also featured in Fey’s movie Mean Girls (2004). In Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016), Julia Sawalha‘s character Saffy sings the song in a bar full of empathetic drag queens who join in singing.
Her 2008 album, Billie’s Bone’s is a tribute to Billie Holiday with whom she shares a birthday today. The album is sparse and hauntingly sad. In an eerily melancholy slow jazz tune, Matthew, Ian pays tribute gay martyr, Matthew Shephard:
What makes a man a man?
It’s not who you love, but whether you can
What makes a man a man?
Ian had some tough going along the road of life, she grew up Black and Jewish and gay in the 1960s, it could not have been easy.
When she was just 16 years old, Ian met the always charming Bill Cosby backstage after performing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Since Ian was underage, she needed to be accompanied while touring by a chaperon. When Cosby met Ian, she had been sleeping with her head on the female chaperon’s lap. Cosby subsequently warned other television show producers that Ian was “…a lesbo, not suitable family entertainment” and that she “….shouldn’t be on television” because of her sexuality, attempting to blacklist her. Weird, because I had always heard that Cosby really liked girl-on-girl stuff.
I never chose a Janis Ian record in order to get the party started, but I listened intently to her thoughtful, yet forceful music when I felt like being alone in my room, worried about fitting in.
Ian is a musical icon who happens to be gay. For more than 55 years she’s been making very special music. I am friends with her on The Facebook, and she seems comfortable with herself after coming out of the closet in 1993. She has been with her wife since 1989 (married in Canada in Summer 2003). I can report that there is nothing sad in her life these days; Ian and her wife live in Nashville with a bunch of kids, grandkids and dogs.
For more than 50 years she’s been making very special music. She continues to tour.
My favorite Janis Ian tune is Stars (1974), an especially sad song about seeking fame that has been covered by Joan Baez, Shirley Bassey, Cher, Nina Simone and Barbara Cook.
STARS
I was never one for singing
What I really feel
Except tonight, I’m bringing
Everything I know that’s real
Stars, they come and go
They come fast or slow
They go like the last light
Of the sun, all in a blaze
And all you see is glory
But it gets lonely there
When there’s no one here to share
We can shake it away
If you’ll hear a story
People lust for fame
Like athletes in a game
We break our collarbones
And come up swinging
Some of us are downed
Some of us are crowned
And some are lost
And never found
But most have seen it all
They live their lives in
Sad cafes and music halls
They always have a story
Some make it when they’re young
Before the world has
Done its dirty job
And later on, someone will say
“You’ve had your day
You must make way”
But they’ll never know the pain
Of living with a name you never owned
Or the many years forgetting
What you know too well
The ones who gave the crown
Have been let down
You try to make amends
Without defending
Perhaps pretending
You never saw the eyes
Of grown men of twenty five
That followed as you walked
And asked for autographs
Or kissed you on the cheek
And you never could believe
They really loved you
Some make it when they’re old
(Perhaps they have a soul
They’re not afraid to bare
Or perhaps there’s nothing there)
Some women have a body
Men will want to see
So they put it on display
Some people play a fine guitar
I could listen to them
Play all day
Some ladies really
Move across a stage
And gee, they sure can dance
I guess I could learn how
If I have it half a chance
But I always feel so funny
When my body tries to soar
And I seem to always worry
About missing the next chord
I guess there isn’t anything
To put up on display
Except the tunes
And whatever else I say
Anyway, that isn’t really
What I meant to say
I meant to tell a story
I live from day to day
Stars, they come and go
They come fast or slow
They go like the last light
Of the sun, all in a blaze
And all you see is glory
But those who’ve seen it all
They live their lives
In sad cafes and music halls
We always have a story
So if you don’t lose patience
With my fumbling around
I’ll come up singing for you
Even when I’m down
Ian has just released a new album, The Light At The End Of The Line, and she is going out on tour this summer. The album has 12 newly-recorded tracks, with duets and backups by Diane Schuur, Vince Gill, and Viktor Krauss. Here is one of the cuts:
