Janis Ian’s most famous song defied the odds when it became a hit in 1975.
The song. “At Seventeen” appeared on Ian’s 1975 album Between the Lines. Written by Ian at age 23, the acoustic-guitar-driven song was a painful reflection on teen insecurity and feeling like an outsider. And while it became a major hit for the young singer, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1975, it almost didn’t happen because Ian was terrified to release it.
Not only did the autobiographical song feature embarrassingly honest lyrics about beauty, but it defied radio rules, running over four minutes long. Even Ian’s record label wasn’t sure how to market the truly personal tune.
“It took three months to write, because it was scary,” Ian told The Guardian in an interview. “This was the mid-70s, before confessional songs, and I’d never been that honest about feeling ugly and never being asked out. I kept picking it up and putting it down, saying: ‘I can’t do this.’”
Ian was living with her mother when she wrote “At Seventeen.” In an essay for Songwriting magazine, she revealed that she had to move back home because she wasn’t earning enough as a musician to support herself.
“I was 22 or 23, and it was horrifying and embarrassing,” Ian shared. “I was trying to write a lot so I would feel like I was at least doing something.”
Ian became inspired by a New York Times magazine article about a debutante ball, and lyrics about “high school girls with clear-skinned smiles” and “love was meant for beauty queens” came to her.
“The first verse took about a week, and the bridge. I then realized that I didn’t have a chorus,” she recalled. “Then I got really scared of the song because it’s very brutal to sing, especially if you’re the writer and 20 – talking about your skin and not getting asked out on dates, it was humiliating and it scared me, so I set it aside for a while. I came back to it a month later. I remember saying, ‘I’m either in this or I’m not, and if I’m in it then I’m in it all the way.’”
Upon its release, “At Seventeen” became so big that Ian was asked to be a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1975, where she performed the song on live TV.
Speaking with The Acoustic Storm more than 30 years later, she admitted, “It’s funny ‘cause, I remember just how unattractive and out of place I felt, and I was watching myself on Saturday Night Live a couple of months ago, ‘cause I did all that stuff live so I never heard myself or saw myself on TV before, and I watched myself and I said to my partner, ‘I wasn’t so ugly. I don’t understand why I felt like I was so ugly.’ It was a funny way of looking back.”
Related: Stevie Nicks Recorded One of Her Most Beautiful Songs Three Times—But It Was Never Released as a Single
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