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Janis Ian.
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Critical Essay by Life
[Janis Ian] is a national phenomenon, a composer and singer who makes bitter poetry of teen-age dilemmas. Her most successful record, entitled Society's Child, detailed t...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
Janis Ian was one of the authentic voices of the Sixties, one of the street kids who told it exactly as it was without any of the "poetic" trimmings. She d...
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Critical Essay by Bob Sarlin
Janis Ian has grown into a charming, mature singer-songwriter. There is surely some of the snotty kid in there somewhere, but what was once called uppityness is now called...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
Janis Ian has arrived. The ugly duckling of Society's Child has, all these years later, become the most glittering and luminescent of swans. ["Aftertones&#...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Holden
Most of Ian's new material [on Miracle Row] recycles old musical ideas, again evoking the hypocrisies of social rituals and romantic encounters. However, these ...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Holden
["Miracle Row"] is a disappointing production and contains no songs of the At Seventeen/Watercolors caliber found on Ian's best-selling "Be...
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Critical Essay by Michael Tearson
With Miracle Row Janis Ian is no longer the "poor, sad dear" her many fans perceived….
Janis' writing has grown…. It is not so self...
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Critical Essay by Variety
The youth movement in the music biz was given a tremendous boost [recently] when Janis Ian made her concert bow to a near-capacity audience. Only 16 years old, Miss Ian stunn...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
Janis Ian is for the trendies one of the most exciting, red-hot writer/performers in pop at the moment; for the rest of us she's definitely here to stay. With &#x...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
[Janis Ian] has proved herself to be one of the most important writer-performers of the Seventies, and she looks at and into you from the cover photo with a veiled stare...
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Critical Essay by Don Shewey
As far as hype goes, it may have been all over for Janis Ian when she quit writing hit songs about being an ugly teenager with a hit song. But as her craft matures, Ian&#x...
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Critical Essay by Aida Pavletich
[In the early 1960s, the genre of teen songs had "the boy-friend" as their central theme. The demons of teendom were the other girls. Parents] were anoth...
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Critical Essay by Hank Fox
Sixteen-year-old Janis Ian has a message. But whether its content is reality or fantasy, one theme is predominant—disintegration of the mind, leading to mental destru...
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Critical Essay by Alan Heineman
[Among contemporary lyricists, Janis Ian] is second as a poet only to John Lennon (certainly) and Dylan and the Airplane's Slick-Kantner-Balin combination (maybe...
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Critical Essay by Alan Heineman
[The Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink is] a real down. It's pretty awful, despite containing some interesting elements. There are only three truly good songs on it: F...
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Critical Essay by Jacques Vassal
The first thing that struck one about Janis Ian was her youth and the precocity of her talent. (p. 205)
It was in 1966, after her dramatic first appearances at Green-w...
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Critical Essay by Noel Coppage
[I find Janis Ian interesting because she uses a] powerful cerebrum more to move people than to impress them. Sometimes she overdoes it and works for shock value alone&#...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
Seven years after the success of Society's Child, a watershed topical song written when she was fifteen, Janis Ian is back, at the age of twenty-two, with songs c...
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Critical Essay by Life
