In his book of “the 52 most depressing songs you’ve ever heard,” I Hate Myself and Want to Die, Tom Reynolds describes Janis Ian’s hit “At 17” as a “self-loathing lounge song that tempted a whole generation of teenage girls to shove their heads into a trash compactor.” In fact, Ian learned the truth at a considerably younger age, and in far uglier fashion than her hit conveys. While Reynolds’ snarky observations are often hilarious, the singer’s history is far more tragic than merely feeling alienated as a teenager.
Anyone depressed by the lyrics to “At 17” should be grateful Ian didn’t write about her life “At 11,” when she was molested by the family dentist; “At 15,” being “spit at in the street” over her first hit record; or “At Twenty-Something,” when a ménage a trois ultimately leads to an epically ill-advised marriage and the moment when a battered Janis is staring down the barrel of a gun wielded by her drunken, mentally unbalanced husband. The autobiographical songs she could have written might send any listener with an ounce of humanity, trash compactor-bound. Regardless of one’s attitude toward her music, it is hard to imagine the reader who would not be moved — even inspired — by Janis Ian’s Society’s Child: My Autobiography.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that someone sensitive and observant enough to express both her outrage and her hopefulness over an interracial love affair as effectively as Ian did with “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking),” at such a young age, would be capable of chronicling such a difficult life as her own with such candor and dignity. Although the song — which Ian calls “a song everyone hates you for” — provoked hate mail and other abuse from offended segregationists, experiencing this indefensible intolerance at a young age undoubtedly steeled Ian for the trials to come later in her life.
As much as music seems to have been Ian’s destiny, activism and controversy also seemed to come naturally. She began playing piano at age 2, by which time her family was under FBI observation as suspected communists, the result of her father’s involvement in a discussion of pricing among local farmers. Her personal tastes in music drew her toward folk and soul, music with substance and a message. Smokey Robinson was her hero, and she felt that, “White pop music was something Republicans listened to, not people like us.”
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