Janis Ian is a famous singer and songwriter from the 20th century. She was a child prodigy when it came to music, and she started learning how to play different instruments and write songs when she was young. She learned how to play the piano, organ, flute, harpsichord, French horn, and guitar before she was even a teenager. In the mid-1960s, she released her first album, which was called “Self-Titled,” and it became an instant hit, which raised her status in the music business. But it took her more than a decade to make another album that did as well as her first. The album “Between the Lines,” which came out in 1975, was the first time she had commercial success again. Its single “At Seventeen” and album both went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The song and album were very popular, which helped her win a Grammy. She has made a number of albums over the years. Janis Ian has also read and written science fiction. She has written columns for a number of publications.
Early years and childhood
Janis Ian was born in New York City as Janis Eddy Fink to Victor and Pearl. His parents ran a camp in New York for kids during the summer.
Most of Janis’s childhood was spent in New Jersey, where she grew up in a Jewish family. She finished her schooling by going to East Orange High School in New Jersey.
She loved folk music from a young age and was influenced by artists like Joan Baez, Odetta, Edith Piaf, and Billie Holiday. She liked music, so when she was six, she started learning how to play the piano.
At age 12, she wrote her first song, “Hair of Spun Gold,” which was published in the folk magazine Broadside. In the same year, she changed her legal name from Janis Eddy Fink to Janis Ian, which was her brother Eric’s middle name.
By the time she was in her teens, she could play the organ, harpsichord, French horn, flute, and guitar, among other instruments.
Janis Lan’s Career
She wrote and sang her first single, “Society’s Child, Baby I’ve Been Thinking,” when she was 13. The song was about a love story between two people of different races, which was frowned upon by society and the girl’s parents.
People back then followed the rules very strictly, so the lyrics of the song that made fun of people who didn’t like mixed-race relationships caused a stir in society. Because of this, the song was taken off the air on several radio stations. She got hate mail and even death threats because of the song.
The song came out three times between 1965 and 1967. But the song only became a national hit after its third release, when Leonard Bernstein played it on a CBS TV show called Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.
Even though the odds were against it, the song was very popular with most people, except for a small group. It went on to sell more than 600,000 copies and get to number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. When the song did well, she became a star overnight.
Janis Ian, her self-titled first album, was finally released on Verve Forecast in 1967. It got as high as number 29 on the charts and sold more than 350,000 copies.
After the success of her first album, she released three more at the same time: “For All the Seasons of Your Mind,” “The Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink,” and “Who Really Cares,” all in 1967, 1968, and 1969. She gave money from the album’s sales to her friends and to charities.
At the age of 20, she said she was leaving the music business. But the self-declared break didn’t last long, and she came back to the music scene right away with her album “Present Company.” But the album did not do well.
After her album didn’t do well, she moved to California to work on her writing. In 1974, with the album “Stars,” she came back to the music scene after being away for three years. The song “Jesse,” which was on the album, went on to become a Top 30 hit.
The album “Between the Lines,” which came out in 1975, was a big step forward in her career. The album broke all of her previous sales records, making it the most successful album of her career. It went platinum at the box office, which is the highest honor for a music album. It was the number one album on the Billboard chart.
The single “At Seventeen” from the album “Between the Lines” became a big hit and was praised by both critics and fans. The song moved up the Billboard Hot 100 chart and stayed at number three.
“At Seventeen” reached number 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart at its best. Even better, the song helped her win her first Grammy Award. In the same year, she sang the song as a guest on the first episode of Saturday Night Live.
After this, she came out with two more albums right away: “After tonnes” in 1976 and “Miracle Row” in 1977. Even though the albums did well, they did not rise as quickly as her first album.
On the US Billboard charts, “After tonnes” got to number 12, while “Miracle Row” was at number 45. But the albums did much better in Japan. “After tonnes” was the number one album on the Oricon chart, and its single “Love Is Blind” was a huge hit.
In 1977, she wrote a story called “On Valentine’s Day,” which was again well-liked by both the public and critics.
In 1979, she released a single called “Fly Too High.” The song was made by Giorgio Moroder and was in the Jodie Foster movie “Foxes.” It was added to her next album, “Night Rains,” which came out a while later. People liked the song a lot, and it even got her a Grammy nomination.
In 1980, she came out with the song “You Are Love,” which went on to become a top 10 single in Japan. It was the theme song for the 1980 movie “Virus” by Kinji Fukasaku.
Restless Eyes, her next album, came out in 1981. Even though the album was well-liked by critics, it did not sell well.
In the same year, she released a single called “Under the Covers,” which made it number 71 on the pop charts.
In 1982, she slowed down on making albums and started focusing on writing songs instead. She worked with Kye Fleming, Amy Grant, Bette Midler, and Marti Jones, among other artists. She even tried to make a living as an actress and took classes from Stella Adler to do so.
She came back to the music scene in 1993 with an album called “Breaking Silence.” This album made her one of the first “indie artists.” The title song on the album was about incest. She went on The Howard Stern Show the same year and played a newer version of the song “At Seventeen.”
Two years later, she made an album called “Revenge.” It was about prostitution and being without a home. She then released two more albums: “Hunger” in 1997 and “God & the FBI” in 2000.
Folk Is the New Black, which came out in 2006, is her most recent album. The album came out on the Rude Girl and Cooking Vinyl labels at the same time. She wrote all the songs for the album on her own, which was something she had not been able to do for 20 years.
She doesn’t just write songs and sing; she also writes. She likes science fiction a lot, so most of her works are about the same thing. Some of her short stories have been put in collections.
She helped put together the book “Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian” with Mike Resnick in 2003. She wrote a column for the magazine Performing Songwriter from 1995 to 2003. She also writes regularly for The Advocate, a magazine for LGBT news.
In 2008, she wrote and released a book about her life called “Society’s Child.” The book got a lot of good reviews. The package also came with a CD called “Autobiography,” which had many of her hit songs on it.
Awards & Achievements
In 1975, her song “At Seventeen” from the album “Between the Line” won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Woman.
In 2001, “Society’s Child” was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame, which honors recordings that are considered important to music history and will last forever.
Society’s Child, her autobiography, won the Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Award in 2013. This was her second Grammy Award.
Personal History and Legacies
She first married a photojournalist named Peter Cunningham. They met at a peace rally. But the marriage didn’t work out, so she went back to singing and writing songs after leaving the music business.
She got married to the Portuguese filmmaker Tino Sargo in 1978, but the marriage didn’t work out, and the two broke up in 1983.
In 1993, she told the world that she was a lesbian. She got married to Patricia Snyder in Toronto ten years after they met.
After her mother died, she sold all of her things at an auction and used the money to set up a scholarship program through the Pearl Foundation. The goal of the fund is to give scholarship money to different schools.
Estimated Net worth
Janis Ian is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and author with a $1 million net worth. She was born in April 1951 in New York City, New York. She got into the folk music scene when she was a teenager.
Ian won a Grammy for her song “At Seventeen” in 1975, and her autobiography Society’s Child won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album in 2013.
Trivia
This American singer-songwriter wrote and published her autobiography, “Society’s Child,” for which she won a Grammy Award in the category of “Best Spoken Word Album.”