THE OUTSIDER
JANIS IAN
Ian’s journey is really a series of milestones. She made her recording debut at the age of 15 in 1966 with “Society’s Child,” a Top 40 single about interracial teen dating that many radio stations wouldn’t touch. Her classic, Grammy-winning “At Seventeen” was the first song ever performed on Saturday Night Live and still remains one of the most astute, heartfelt tales of outsider angst and growing up ever written (listen for it in Mean Girls).
Last year, 15 years after Ian came out on her album Breaking Silence, “At Seventeen” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In September, Columbia/Legacy released The Essential Janis Ian, a two-disc anthology spanning Ian’s four-decade-long career and coinciding with her U.S. tour and the paperback release of her book, Society’s Child: My Autobiography.
