American - Musician | April 7, 1951 -
I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music.
Janis Ian
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My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.
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There will always be those people who are just backward and ignorant. There will always be those people. They need somebody to feel superior to.
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I see interracial couples all the time in Nashville. I'm a Jew in Nashville. I'm a gay person in Nashville. It's a non-issue in most of the time. That's a huge leap forward.
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'Society's Child' was a real hard record to start with. That's all you want is for you to put your first record out and have people screaming at you in the streets. But it taught me right away that what I was doing was valuable and important.
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At the end of the day, if you don't have a record contract, a studio or a guitar, you can still write songs. You're still an artist. That's something no one can take away.
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I think I grew up, stopped worrying about what people thought of me, and whether things were going to turn out OK. I'm concentrating on doing the best work I can do and letting it go at that.
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I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we're totally unsuited for anything else. And I for one am much too lazy.
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A radio show recently did a beautiful eulogy of me.
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Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have.
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I had a vague idea of the song's impact in the '60s, but that was tempered by the hate mail and threats I was receiving. It was only about ten years ago, when I finally put it back in my show because so many people were asking for it, that I understood 'Society's Child' real impact.
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The best thing you can learn from the worst times of your life is that it always gets better. It may take a month, a year, a decade, but it will get better if you leave yourself open to it.
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