Janis Ian

Janis Ian is a singer and songwriter whose career has gone through three distinct stages. Ian had an initial burst of fame as a teenager with a precocious gift for social and political commentary, as documented on her self-titled 1967 debut album and its hit single "Society's Child." She returned to the public eye in the mid-'70s with deeply personal songs about life and relationships; this era was launched with the albums Stars (1974) and Between the Lines (1975), and a track from the latter album, "At Seventeen," would become her best-known song. In 1993, after ten years away from the spotlight, Ian re-emerged as an independent artist whose comeback album, Breaking Silence (1993), fused a mature viewpoint on the world around her to an urgent and confident lyrical voice. In each stage of her career, Ian's lyrics were literate and emotionally honest, even at the age of 14 (when she penned "Society's Child"), and her vocals have a warmth that reflects strength and vulnerability with equal eloquence.

Janis Ian was born Janis Eddy Fink on April 7, 1951. Her mother gave birth at a hospital in the Bronx borough of New York City, and the family lived on a farm in Southern New Jersey. Ian's father Victor was a chicken farmer who later became a music teacher, while her mother Pearl was a waitress who would go on to a career in academic fundraising; they also ran a summer camp in the Garden State. The Finks were also political activists who supported a number of progressive causes, which led to the F.B.I. investigating the family and briefly putting their camp under surveillance