Everybody feels like an outcast in high school, especially if you’re not one of the “popular” or good-looking kids. That feeling is well-conveyed in today’s classic song of the day, Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen.” Released in July of 1975 as the second single from her surprise hit album Between the Lines, this brutally honest track went all the way to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
Janis Ian wrote “At Seventeen” about the pain and cruelty of one’s teenaged years. The lyrics drip with devastating honesty:
I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth
And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, “Come dance with me”
And murmured vague obscenities
It isn’t all it seems
At seventeen
Here’s what Ms. Ian remembers remembers about writing the song:
“Sometimes you don’t have a lot of control over a song. You can control the craft, but not the inspiration. I wrote the first verse and chorus and it was so brutally honest. It’s hard to imagine now but people weren’t writing that type of song then. I was coming out of listening to people like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, who did write those kinds of songs, but pop music and folk music really didn’t. I remember thinking I couldn’t blow this because it really was going to be a good song. I put it away for three weeks and it took about three months to write the whole thing. I couldn’t figure out the ending, I couldn’t figure out what to do with her, then I thought I would recap it, bring myself into it and bring it into the past.”
“At Seventeen” struck a chord with insecure teenagers everywhere, especially teenaged girls. It also won Ms. Ian a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. In addition, “At Seventeen” was nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. (It lost the first to the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” and the second to Judy Collins’ recording of “Send in the Clowns.”)
Listening to it today, “At Seventeen” takes me back to my years at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. Because of my various activities I was one of those kids that everybody knew even though I didn’t necessarily have a close circle of friends. I felt a bit like the ugly duckling, somehow different from the “in” crowd. Little did I know that almost everybody else in high school (except, perhaps, the “in” crowd) felt the same way. Janis Ian captured that angst and loneliness and made us all feel just a little bit less alone.
Here’s an interesting factoid: Janis Ian was one of the musical guests (along with Billy Preston) on the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live (then titled just Saturday Night) on October 11, 1975. That performance is not available to stream online, so today’s daily bonus video of the day is, instead, Ms. Ian performing “At Seventeen” on the BBC series, Old Grey Whistle Test, complete with a touching spoken introduction. Damn, this is a fine song, movingly performed.
