At 70, the singer-songwriter who has always been unafraid of difficult subjects is releasing a final album.The Light at the End of the Line.
On a recent morning, Janis Ian spoke expansively from her work space in Florida about a 50-year career marked by literary lyrics, social activism and major hits. Just one subject brought her up short. When pondering younger artists who’ve publicly cited her as an inspiration, she paused and threw up her arms. “I can’t think of one. So many people say, ‘Joni Mitchell is my big influence,’” she said. “And I thought, wait a minute. Didn’t I influence anybody?”
She might not get the loudest shout-outs, but there’s no denying that Ian has often served as a cultural clairvoyant.
In 1967, she became one of the first fully self-determined female singer-songwriters in pop, having penned every track on her debut album, which was released one month before Laura Nyro’s, a year before Joni Mitchell’s and three before Carole King’s.
The subjects she became most famous for writing about, outliers at the time, have since become ubiquitous. Her breakthrough hit, “Society’s Child,” written in 1965 when she was 14, was one of the first charting songs to center on an interracial romance. Her biggest score. At Seventeen,which reached No. 2 in 1975, confronted lookism and bullying with a candor that anticipated the work of contemporary artists including Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato and Lizzo. Ian was also one of the first gay pop stars to come out in the early ’90s, and she championed free downloads as a promotional device back when the industry did everything it could to shut them down.
The disparity between the world in which she carved her path and today has been on Ian’s mind lately because of a major decision she made in the last year. At 70, she will release her final album, “The Light at the End of the Line,” this Friday, followed by a valedictory tour. “I’m done,” she said, with a mixture of relief and anticipation. Ian said the wear and tear of serving as her own manager and song publisher, along with life as a touring musician, left little time for the thing she loves most.
That includes haiku, short stories and a novel she hopes to finish in her coming life. She’ll work on everything in a nearly completed addition to her home, on an island in Tampa Bay where she lives with her wife of 19 years, Patricia Snyder, a retired criminal defense lawyer.
Her final songs have a summary mission. In the title track, an elegant acoustic ballad, she bids adieu to her fans. “Some of them have stuck with me for 56 years,” she said. “That’s longer than I’ve known most of my family.” In “I’m Still Standing,” the stalwart melody underscores lyrics that embrace the physical changes brought by time, which, Ian said, explains the white hair and lack of makeup she proudly sported in our interview. In the classically influenced piano piece “Nina,” she salutes one of the artists she most admires, her friend, Nina Simone, who cut a bracingly rueful version of Ian’s song “Stars” in 1976.
You must be logged in to post a comment.