Janis Ian

folk · folk rock · pop rock

Janis Ian, born Janis Eddy Fink on April 7, 1951 in Farmingdale, New Jersey, is an American folk singer-songwriter who grew up on a farm and attended the New York City High School of Music and Art. She wrote Society's Child, a song about an interracial relationship, at fourteen; after three separate releases between 1965 and 1967 it became a hit once Leonard Bernstein featured it on a CBS television special, reaching No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1967. Her signature record arrived with At Seventeen, which reached No. 3 in 1975 and won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; its parent album, Between the Lines, topped the Billboard album chart and was certified platinum. Fly Too High followed as an international hit in 1979. Ian founded her own label, Rude Girl Records, in 1992, released Breaking Silence in 1993 and came out as a lesbian the same year. She is also a science fiction author and columnist, and co-edited the 2003 anthology Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian with Mike Resnick. Her memoir Society's Child appeared in 2008, and its audiobook won the 2013 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. She has two Grammy wins from ten nominations across eight categories, and Society's Child entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. The Light at the End of the Line, released on Rude Girl in January 2022 and billed as her final solo studio album, drew a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album and featured guests including Vince Gill, Sam Bush and Diane Schuur. Ian described her 2022 North American dates as her last full tour but continues to perform and teach selectively. In August 2026 she serves as the first artist-in-residence at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, a run combining solo concerts with master classes on songwriting, storytelling and the music business.

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