Janis Ian

Janis Ian

Janis Ian is a US singer-songwriter, musician, columnist and science fiction author from New York, United States. Born Janis Eddy Fink in 1951 in New York City, she grows up primarily in New Jersey, first on a farm and later in East Orange. She attends East Orange High School and the New York City High School of Music & Art. Her parents, Victor and Pearl, run a summer camp in upstate New York, and their left-wing politics lead to government surveillance during the Cold War. Ian later refers to these years in the song “God and the FBI”.

Early writing and first success

Ian begins writing songs at the age of twelve, when she writes “Hair of Spun Gold”. The song is published in the folk magazine Broadside and later recorded for her debut album. At thirteen she legally changes her name to Janis Ian, taking her surname from her brother Eric’s middle name. In the same year she writes and sings “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking)”, a song about an interracial relationship that becomes her first hit single. Produced by George “Shadow” Morton, it is released three times between 1965 and 1967 and reaches a national audience after Leonard Bernstein features it in the television special *Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution*. The song faces radio bans and withdrawals in some places because of its subject matter, but later reaches number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in summer 1967.

1970s success

Ian’s career peaks in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1975 she wins a Grammy Award for “At Seventeen”, which becomes her most successful single in the United States. The song is a reflection on adolescent cruelty, popularity and teenage insecurity, told from the point of view of a 24-year-old. It reaches number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Adult Contemporary chart, and wins the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female. Its parent album, *Between the Lines*, reaches number one on Billboard’s album chart, is quickly certified gold, and later receives platinum certification for sales of more than a million copies in the US.

Later work and identity

Ian continues recording into the twenty-first century. In 1993 she returns with *Breaking Silence*, described as a worldwide release and the record that includes the title song about incest. She also comes out as a lesbian with that album. Her 2006 album *Folk Is the New Black* is the first in more than twenty years on which she writes all the songs herself.

Influences and style

As a young artist, Ian admires folk singers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. Her work is associated with contemporary folk, folk, folk pop, singer-songwriter and soft rock. She is also known as a columnist and as a science fiction author.