Janis Ian Artistfacts

Janis Ian song list

Janis Ian Artistfacts

April 7, 1951
Janis grew up in an all-black neighborhood in East Orange, New Jersey. With the exception of a weekly folk music program, all she listened to for years was an R&B station out of Newark. It wasn't until she was 13 or 14 that she started listening to The Beach Boys and The Beatles.
Her birth name was Janis Eddy Fink. She changed it when she was 13 and started performing. "Ian" is her brother's middle name.
She was a big part of the New York City folk scene at a very young age. Her first single, "Society's Child," was a hit in 1967 when she was 15.
She took piano lessons when she was 2, but gave it up. By the time she was 10, she was teaching herself how to play guitar.
Janis Ian and Billy Preston were the very first musical guests on Saturday Night Live. Each played two songs on that first episode, which aired October 11, 1975, with Ian doing "At Seventeen" and "In The Winter," and Preston playing "Nothing From Nothing" and "Fancy Lady." Ian had strep throat and a fever that night, but still pulled off an impressive performance that reached a huge audience and gave her a nice career boost.
She turned down a slot at the original Woodstock because she was exhausted from touring and the festival looked like it was going to be a disaster when it was in the planning stages. Ian lists this decision as one of her top career regrets, along with turning down a chance to score the film The Graduate and turning down the song "You Light Up My Life," which became a #1 hit for Debby Boone.
A prolific songwriter, Roberta Flack had a hit with her song "Jesse" in 1973. Janis has also written commercial jingles, including songs for McDonalds, AT&T, Budweiser, and Coke.
Janis has written many magazine articles, including a regular column for Performing Songwriter magazine. She got a lot of attention for taking the stand that Internet file sharing is good for most musicians. She has sold a lot more records and merchandise since Napster and other services have made her songs available for download.
She started the Pearl Foundation (named after her mother) to offer scholarships for college.
In 2003, she married her girlfriend: Nashville defense lawyer Patricia Snyder. The ceremony took place in Toronto, where gay marriages were legal (same-sex marriage wasn't legalized nationwide in America until 2015). Her song "Married In London" is about how her own country wouldn't recognize her marriage, but others would.
Ian didn't come out as gay publicly until 1993, doing so when she joined Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang at the Triangle Ball, part of Bill Clinton's inaugural ball. She didn't make any effort to hide it, though, and those who knew her well or covered her in the press were aware.

But then in 1978 she married a man, a Portuguese filmmaker named Tino Sargo. "My mother told me not to sleep with anybody I wasn't in love with, but she forgot to specify gender," Ian quipped. That relationship was sincere but turned abusive; the couple divorced in 1983.
Tina Fey named a character in her 2004 movie Mean Girls "Janis Ian." Played by Lizzy Caplan, she's not a mean girl but one of their antagonists. The character name is an Easter Egg relating to the song "At Seventeen," which is about a high school girl who doesn't fit in. The song plays in the film in a scene where the character appears.
Ian has long been a champion for gay rights, women's rights and civil rights. She told Songfacts how they compare. "I think you have to separate all three of them," she said. "You can't hide if you're black and you can't hide if you're female. You can hide if you're gay. So that's been a major drawback and a major plus. But it makes the whole gay rights movement very different from women's rights or from civil rights as we know it."
She was offered an audition for the role of Carla in the TV series Cheers but turned it down because Carla was described as a frumpy woman with a big mouth, and the show was set in a bar where a main character, Norm, doesn't have a job and complains about his wife all the time. The role went to Rhea Perlman, who made Carla a beloved and nuanced character on the long-running and highly acclaimed show.

Comments: 2

Hillary from South OrangeI can relate to the song At 17
Kristen from Alhambra, Casublime lives everytime you play a song and hear bradlys vioce.or even in ur heart and soul.he lives!!!!!!

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