In Case You Missed It - Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, Film Reviewed by NPR Fresh Air
Published
In Case You Missed It
About Janis Ian
Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
Film Reviewed by NPR Fresh Air
New Award Winning, Documentary
Varda Bar-Kar’s Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
In Theaters and Streaming Video-On-Demand Now
Newly-Released Single, “One In A Million”
A Duet With Joan Baez, Out Now
In the mid-60s, Janis Ian, a teenage singer-songwriter from New Jersey, scores a controversial hit single called “Society’s Child,” about an interracial love relationship. The song launches her illustrious career but also ignites death threats, plunging her into an emotional tailspin – only to emerge from the ashes in the 1970s with an even bigger hit,”At Seventeen,” ahead of its time in confronting lookism and bullying. Janis overcomes significant obstacles – embezzlement, record industry misogyny, homophobia, and heartbreak – to find love and produce an indelible body of searingly honest songs that earned her a devoted following and critical acclaim.
Janis Ian: Breaking Silence features Janis Ian, friends, and collaborators,
including Joan Baez, Lily Tomlin, Jean Smart, Laurie Metcalf, and Arlo Guthrie.
More information on screenings and platforms to view film on, go to:
Janis Ian’s never-released single
“One In A Million” a duet with Joan Baez and an anthem for change just released.
Co-written by Ian and Jess Leary, Ian said “We decided to write an anthem,” Ian said. “It felt like the world was getting stranger every day. People were scared, feeling hopeless. Writing ‘One In a Million’ made us feel hopeful. It reminded us that no matter how hard things got, we were not alone.
Single now available on all digital streaming providers, as well as a free download along with the sheet music on Janis’ website: janisian.com/.
Singer-songwriter Janis Ian
proves a gifted storyteller in ‘Breaking Silence’
MAY 14 2025
HEARD ON FRESH AIR
David Bianculli
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Janis Ian, the singer-songwriter who had her first hit record as a teenager in the 1960s, is the subject of a new documentary, “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, ” now available to stream on demand. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI: When Janis Ian was young, she was very precocious. She got her first song, both lyrics and music, printed in the same folk music magazine that first published a song by Bob Dylan. But at the time, she was only 13. Not long after, she recorded another composition, “Society’s Child,” which was about a young girl whose date arrived to pick her up and was met with disapproval from her mother because her daughter was white, but her date was black. That was in the mid-’60s, and the song became a hit after Leonard Bernstein featured it and her on a TV special he hosted for CBS in 1967.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEONARD BERNSTEIN: I’ve managed to find a marvelous song called “Society’s Child, ” written, astonishingly enough, by a 15-year-old girl named Janis Ian. This tune is very well known among the followers of pop music, but you may not have heard it since it’s been withheld by most of the radio stations, for reasons unknown to me, although probably having to do with its subject matter, which is, as you’ll see, somewhat controversial. Listen hard to “Society’s Child.”
JANIS IAN: (Singing) Come to my door, baby. Face is clean and shining black as night. My mother went to answer. You know that you looked so fine. Now, I could understand your tears and your shame. She called you boy instead of your name. When she wouldn’t let you inside, when she turned and said, but, honey, he’s not our kind.
BIANCULLI: The next time Janis Ian had a hit record was almost a decade later. At age 24, she appeared as a musical guest on the very first episode of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” singing a song looking back on her own adolescence. It was called “At Seventeen.” In “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence,” the new documentary by Varda Bar-Kar, you get to see and hear Janis perform it while people, such as actress Jean Smart, talk about what the song meant to them.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE”)
JEAN SMART: To this day, it affects me the same way as when I first heard it.
IAN: (Singing) And the rich-relationed hometown queen marries into what she needs with a…
SMART: It’s not just she’s talking about the pain of adolescence and the pain of feeling like an ugly duckling and the pain of not being in the in crowd or whatever. It’s also about being the tall, blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader.
IAN: (Singing) Remember those who win the game lose the love they sought to gain.
SMART: I was the cheerleader. I was the girl that Janis sang about in “At Seventeen.” I was the good girl who was dating the bad boy (laughter).
IAN: (Singing) Their small town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise…
BIANCULLI: Janis Ian won her first Grammy for “At Seventeen.” When it was presented to her by Lily Tomlin, Janis noted the long gap between her first and second hit records in her acceptance speech, which I will now play in its entirety.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
IAN: Thank you. It’s been a long time. Thank you.
BIANCULLI: Janis Ian won her second Grammy not for singing, but for talking. In 2013, she won a Grammy for best spoken word album for her reading of her just- published memoir, “Society’s Child.” That memoir showed that Janis Ian was a gifted writer even when she wasn’t writing lyrics. Her writing style is clear and honest. And the way she read her own words was both conversational and confessional. The same elements shine through in this new film documentary, which has Janis Ian talking candidly about her past. Whether she’s talking in vintage or newly recorded interviews, she’s a gifted storyteller – even when she’s talking about such personal memories as her then-husband, who abused her.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE”)
IAN: (Singing) Go find a fence, locate a shell and hide yourself. Go on. Go to hell. Go away from me.
The last time I saw him, he held a gun on me for seven hours. I talked to him about being Catholic, about how his grandmother would feel. I urged him to take more valium, because he took a lot of valium. I urged him to keep drinking. I hoped he would pass out.
(Singing) Hold the darkness and stay the night.
He finally agreed with me that he was tired. And I helped him up to bed, left the house. That was it. And it’s a terrible thing to say in some ways, but the day that he died was the day that I finally felt free, because I no longer had to worry about him coming for me.
(Singing) Come on, set me free.
BIANCULLI: After that marriage, Janis Ian kept recording albums and writing songs, but approached her work and her life differently. She came out, and wrote a regular column for The Advocate. She married again in 2003 – this time to a woman, Patricia Snyder. And after their marriage, she wrote a song about it, “Married in London,” which she performed gleefully in concerts until a medical problem with her throat forced her to quit touring.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE”)
IAN: (Singing) We’re married in London, but not in New York. (LAUGHTER)
IAN: (Singing) Spain says we’re kosher. The States say we’re pork. (LAUGHTER)
IAN: (Singing) We wed in Toronto. The judge said, amen. And when we got home, we were single again.
(LAUGHTER)
IAN: The idea of getting married as a gay person was so foreign. We kept thinking that it wasn’t going to mean that much – everything was going to be the same. We were really shocked when we both started weeping after the ceremony.
(Singing) But love has no colors…
BIANCULLI: “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence” tells her story using several visual techniques, including animation and recreations. Not all of them work. But the best storyteller in this documentary is the artist herself. Whether she’s singing or talking, Janis Ian is captivating. And in her 70s now, she’s still quite precocious.
DAVIES: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence,” now available on many streaming sites to view on demand.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I’m Dave Davies.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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About Janis Ian
Janis Ian is a 10-time GRAMMY nominee (two-time winner) whose songs and performances have resonated with a diverse group of fans for more than five decades. She is one of just a handful of artists who have received nominations in eight completely different categories. Raised by activist Jewish parents on a New Jersey farm, she currently lives in Florida with her partner and wife of 34 years.
Ian received her first GRAMMY nomination in 1967 for “Best Folk Album” with Janis Ian, featuring “Society’s Child.” She took home her first GRAMMY in 1975 for “Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female – At Seventeen,” and her second for “Best Spoken Word Album – Society’s Child: My Autobiography” in 2013. Her 2023 GRAMMY nomination for “Best Folk Album,” The Light at the End of the Line, brought her full circle.
Two of her most powerful songs, “Society’s Child” and “At Seventeen,” were inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 2002 and 2008, respectively. She received the International Folk Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023 and was honored by Ireland’s Tradfest and Ireland’s Minister of Culture in 2024 for Outstanding Achievements In the Arts.
Ian has been mining her treasure trove of music and memorabilia for a massive archival project, the Janis Ian Archives, that opened in October of 2024 at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. She has also been preparing collections of rare and previously unreleased recordings. The first two releases, Live at the Calderone Theater 1975 and Worktapes & Demos Vol. 1, dropped last fall with more to come. She is also making appearances to support the theatrical release of a documentary about her life and work. Janis Ian: Breaking Silence is helmed by award-winning director/producer Varda Bar-Kar, best known for Big Voice (Netflix, PBS) and Fandango at the Wall (Max). Along with Ian, the film, which will have a June 2025 broadcast premiere on PBS’ famed American Masters, features interviews with friends including Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Lily Tomlin, Jean Smart, Laurie Metcalf, and others.
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