At Seventeen


Janis Ian - At Seventeen

Related Lessons

lesson:
Female Singer-Songwriters in the Early 1970s

Grades: High, Middle
Subjects: Social Studies/History

What did the success of the female Singer-Songwriters of the early 1970s reveal about the changing roles of women in the United States?

Related People

people:
Janis Ian

(b. 1951) Pop-Folk songstress Janis Ian has sustained a long career, but is best known for two hits that established her as a writer unafraid to take on weighty subject matter. The first was “Society’s Child,” a controversial 1965 song about an interracial teen romance that was a hit when Ian was just 15, the second, released a decade later, was “At Seventeen,” a stark, intimate song narrating the experiences of an outcast, lovelorn teenager. Born Janis Eddy Fink, Ian grew up in a socially conscious family in New Jersey, learning to play piano at two. Influenced by Folk singers like...