Janis Ian is tagged as: singer-songwriter, female vocalists, folk, pop, classic rock
A singer/songwriter both celebrated and decried for her pointed handling of taboo topics, Janis Ian enjoyed one of the more remarkable second acts in music history; after first finding success as a teen, her career slumped, only to enter a commercial resurgence almost a decade later. The child of a music teacher, Janis Eddy Fink was born on May 7, 1951, in New York City; she studied piano as a child, and, drawing influence from Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, and Odetta, wrote her first songs at the age of 12. She soon entered Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art, where she began performing at school functions; after adopting the surname Ian (her brother’s middle name), she quickly graduated to the New York folk circuit.
When she was just 15, she recorded her self-titled debut; the LP contained “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking),” a meditation on interracial romance written by Ian while waiting to meet with her school guidance counselor. While banned by a few radio stations, the single failed to attract much notice until conductor Leonard Bernstein invited its writer to perform the song on his television special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution. The ensuing publicity and furor over its subject matter pushed “Society’s Chil...
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