The Essential Janis Ian

Music Review:
Janis Ian - The Essential Janis Ian

http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-janis-ian-the-essential/

by Jade Blackmore
Oct 08, 2009

Singer/songwriter Janis Ian, best known for her 1975 hit "At
Seventeen" began her career as a child prodigy. For the next 40
years, her songs dealt with everything from domestic abuse, coming
out as a lesbian, the Holocaust, teenage alienation and incest, along
with ballads about loneliness and love.

The Essential Janis Ian provides the travelogue for this journey. Ian
picked all the songs on this two-disc compilation. With over 30
albums dating back to 1967, alternate versions, unreleased demos, and
live performances, she had a huge amount of work from which to
choose. This set from Columbia/Legacy traces Ian's career from her
first tumultuous hit as a teenager to the quieter, more introspective
tunes dealing with topical issues and lost love in the decades that followed.

Essential's first CD covers Ian's work from her teen years to the
early 1990s. The first song is a demo recording of "Hair of Spun
Gold," which Ian wrote when she was 12. There is a wistful, folk tale
quality to this coming of age saga. "God & the FBI" was inspired by
J. Edgar Hoover and his buddies spying on her left wing parents.
"Silly Habits" has a swinging piano and jazzy vocals. Ian's early
work didn't get the airplay of other folkies and troubadours of the
time like Joan Baez , Pete, Paul and Mary or Bob Dylan, but she
certainly was a vital part of the folk movement, due to one song in particular.

Her first success was with the controversial tale of interracial
romance "Society's Child." The song, produced by Shadow Morton
(Shangri-las, New York Dolls), was so taboo many stations refused to
play it. "But, honey, he's not our kind', Ian sings, mimicking a
mother forcing her daughter to break up with her boyfriend. This song
was so controversial when it was first released; a radio station was
burned down for playing it. Her initial record label, Atlantic,
considered the song too volatile for public consumption and shelved
it. Verve then released it, and "Society's Child" became a top 20 hit in 1967.

After the whirlwind success of "Society's Child" Ian faded into the
background for awhile to "find herself" and recover from dealing with
sudden onslaught of fame and controversy at such a young age. In
1973, she returned with the album Stars. It's most famous song,
"Jesse," a tender love song about an absent paramour, was popularized
by Roberta Flack, and later recorded by Shirley Bassey and Joan Baez,
among others.

Ian didn't become a household name herself until 1976, when her album
Between the Lines spawned the hit "At Seventeen." Both the single and
album version are included on this collection. "At Seventeen" the
theme song for alienated teenage girls everywhere. And where else
could you hear poetry like "in debentures of quality / and dubious
integrity/ Their small town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise /
wham payment dot exceeds accounts receive at seventeen.." on AM radio.

But all Ian's musings are not bleak. The hopeful twang, harmonica and
all, of "This Train Still Runs" looks at the bright side of getting
older. Night Rains, her last album of the 1970s paired her with early
electronica kingpin Giorgio Moroder for the disco-pop anthem "Fly Too
High," her most upbeat and commercial single (It was more successful
in Europe and Australia than the U.S.). The sweeping and majestic
"Love is Blind" is the only offering from the poignant Aftertones.

The second disc contains songs unfamiliar to the causal listener;
since there are no radio hits included. By the early '90s, Ian had
her own label Rude Girl, and most of the songs on this disc are
selected from those releases. There's "My Tennessee Hills" (with
Dolly Parton on second vocals), a lovely ode to Appalachia. The
melancholy "Some People's Lives" dissects the ways people live in
emotional squalor, while "Stolen Fire" brims with percussive verve.

The lyrics here stand on their own as sheer personal and emotional
poetry. While Ian's work (and certainly her personal stance) has
always had a liberal political bent, the romantic songs included on
Essential are applicable to anyone's love life, regardless of gender
or sexual proclivity. There's an inclusive, humanistic appeal to her messages.

Ian has a sense if humor, too. She once guested on Howard Stern's
show, strumming a spoof of "At Seventeen" about Jerry Seinfeld and
his young girlfriend. A snippet of the song was also famously used on
The Simpsons. Her autobiography "Society's Child" is now available,
and you can read more about Janis Ian's life and music on her
website. http://www.janisian.com/

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