At 14, Janis Ian recorded a song most record companies wanted nothing to do with.
Born Janis Eddy Fink, Ian grew up on a New Jersey chicken farm in a home filled with music. Her mother loved jazz, her father favored folk and Ian was playing guitar and writing songs by 12. She started “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking)” at 13 and recorded it the following year.
The song follows a white teenager whose relationship with a Black boy is condemned by her mother, classmates and teachers. By the final verse, the pressure has won and she ends the relationship. It was a difficult subject for pop radio in the mid-1960s, especially coming from a singer barely in high school.
Atlantic Records paid for the recording session, then declined to release the song and returned the master. Jerry Wexler later apologized for the decision. Verve Records eventually agreed to put it out in 1966 after a double-digit number of labels had passed.
“Society’s Child” did not become an immediate national success. Its break came the next year, when Leonard Bernstein featured Ian on the CBS special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution. The appearance helped the single reach the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Ian a teenage star.
Success also exposed her to racist harassment, boycotts and death threats. At a concert in Encino, California, roughly 20 hecklers began shouting slurs during the song. Ian left the stage crying before gathering herself and returning to finish the show.
“The song didn’t just have the power to make people angry, but it had the power to make people stand up,” Ian later said.
Ian returned to the charts in 1975 with “At Seventeen,” which reached No. 3 and won her a Grammy. “Society’s Child” later lent its name to her 2008 autobiography. The 2025 documentary Janis Ian: Breaking Silence returned to the song, the threats and the concert that changed how she understood her own work.
Related: 1971 Soft Rock Hit, Covered by Andy Williams, Was a No. 1 Hit 55 Years Ago Today
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