Photo: Eddie / CC BY-SA 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Janis Ian is one of those artists who quietly rewrote the rules while everyone else was following them. She was barely a teenager when she wrote and recorded "Society's Child" in 1966 — a song about interracial romance that got banned on radio stations across the country — and somehow that early controversy just made her sharper. Then she came back in 1975 with "At Seventeen," this devastating, perfectly observed song about adolescent invisibility that hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and it still holds up because it's just that honest. What gets me is the range: she's a singer, a songwriter, a novelist, a memoirist, and she won a Grammy in 2013 for narrating her own autobiography. The Bronx gave the world a lot of tough, clear-eyed voices, and Janis Ian is absolutely one of them.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Janis Ian
- Name (Japanese)
- ジャニス・イアン
- Reading
- じゃにす・いあん
- Born
- April 7, 1951 (age 75)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aries / Rabbit
- Origin
- The Bronx, New York, United States
- Occupation
- singer / singer-songwriter / writer / composer / songwriter
2. Background
- High school
- East Orange Campus High School
Awards & achievements
- 2013 Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording
- Audie Award for Narration by the Author or Authors
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Frequently asked questions
When was Janis Ian born?
Born April 7, 1951 (age 75).
Where is Janis Ian from?
Janis Ian is from The Bronx, New York, United States.
What does Janis Ian do?
Janis Ian works as singer, singer-songwriter, writer, composer, songwriter.
Singer — see all → · Singer-songwriter — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.