Legendary Singer/Songwriter Janis Ian

Continues to Rack Up the Accolades

 

The Artist To Receive International Folk Music Awards’

Lifetime Achievement Award in February

 

Ian’s Final Studio Album

Nominated for GRAMMY Award

And Lands on Best-Of 2022 Critics’ Lists

 

“Ian [is] one of America’s most frank

and sensitive songwriters.”

— Award-winning music critic Jim Farber

     

LOS ANGELES — Iconic singer/songwriter Janis Ian is kicking off 2023 with a bang! She is set to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, earned an Artist of the Year nomination, and landed on many year-end best albums lists. “With more years behind me than ahead of me, I’m grateful and astounded at so much recognition,” says the 71-year-old artist.    

Ian will receive an Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 International Folk Music Awards (IFMA) on February 1 in Kansas City, Missouri on the opening night of the Folk Alliance International’s 35th annual conference and is also up for the Artist of the Year award alongside Jake Blount, Prateek Kuhad, Leyla McCalla, and Aoife O’Donovan.    

The Lifetime Achievement Award honors the cultural impact of legendary folk music figures in three categories: Living (Ian), Legacy (Josh White), and Business/Academic (John Prine’s Oh Boy Records). In choosing Ian for this honor, the Folk Alliance writes, “Janis Ian is a music icon whose songs and performances have resonated with the public for over five decades. Much of her music has poignantly focused on social issues, as Ian is a pioneer of both confessional singer-songwriters’ music and social protest.”    

“Her first hit, ‘Society’s Child,’ written when she was just fourteen,” they continue, “spoke empathetically about interracial romance, and her indelible song ‘At Seventeen’ remains the anthem for ‘ugly duckling girls’ maligned by false beauty standards. Her music defies easy categorization, with albums like ‘Stars’ and ‘Between the Lines’ becoming classics in both the adult contemporary and folk rock idioms. Ian was also a pioneer of artist-run labels with her Rude Girl Records and, after coming out with her groundbreaking 1993 album Breaking Silence, she’s been a beacon for LGBTQIA+ awareness in the folk community. Ian (was just forced to retire) from performing, making this the perfect time to honor this living legend.”    

“At Seventeen,” which was recently listed as one of the most essential folk songs of all time by Folk Alley, still resonates with young girls today as further evidenced by Violet Grohl, the 16-year-old daughter of Dave Grohl (the Foo Fighters, Nirvana), who performed the track for her dad’s Hanukkah Sessions in December. After a recording of it was released online, Ian wrote on her Facebook page: “This morning I woke up and thought ‘How strange. I’ll never be able to sing ‘At Seventeen’ again.’ And I don’t mind admitting that it was really depressing. But what better antidote could there be than to hear my work, 47 years after I wrote it, beautifully and sincerely sung by Violet Grohl? What a perfectly happy day this turned out to be. Thank you, Violet. Thank you, Dave. Thank you.”    

Reflecting further on “At Seventeen,” which earned her the GRAMMY Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance-Female in 1976 and hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, Ian says, “It’s a piece of luck when you can hit on a universal theme like ‘At Seventeen.’ It’s what you strive for as a writer. I’m astonished that the song has lived this long, but I’m also horrified that it, and ‘Society’s Child,’ are both still so relevant. I would have hoped that by now so many things would be better.”    

Ian announced earlier this year that she has been forced to end the touring phase of her career and “rewire” her recording career due to scarring on her vocal cords. 2022’s critically acclaimed The Light at the End of the Line, Ian’s first album of all-new material in 15 years on her own Rude Girl Records, is likely her last solo studio album. Even so, she is certainly not closing out this chapter of her career and life quietly, or unnoticed. Four days after the Folk Awards will be the 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles where The Light at the End of the Line is up for Best Folk Album. This is her 10th GRAMMY nomination, which she’s received in eight categories over six decades, and could be her third win. The IFMA Artist of the Year nomination is her first for that award show.  

Meanwhile, The Light at the End of the Line continues to feel the love from the media as award-winning music critic, Jim Farber, chose the album as one of his “Best 12 Albums of 2022” in A.A.R.P. The Magazine. “Fifty-five years after her debut album, Janis Ian, 71, decided to bring her career to a close this year,” writes Farber. “Before she did, she created an album with the literary lyrics, fine musicianship, and intimate vocals that long ago made Ian one of America’s most frank and sensitive songwriters. From pieces about the state of the world to several about aging, to one that offers a frank assessment of her complicated friendship with Nina Simone, Ian’s swan song offers a worthy and moving, goodbye.”    

Likewise, the U.K.’s Arts Desk lists the album as one of the best of 2022 and gives it a 5 out of 5-star rating. “If you don’t know Ian’s great body of work, you should… [The Light at the End of the Line is] a largely acoustic album, it reflects the range of Ian’s work (jazz and blues, the folk music amid which she grew up), her rich harmonic palette, and her ability to distill life’s complexities into concise and striking imagery and metaphor,” writes Liz Thomson. Additionally, Australia’s Rhythms Magazine has listed The Light… as one of the Top 10 Albums of the Year for 2022 and WFUV’s veteran on-air host Darren DeVivo’s Top 25 Favorite Albums of 2022.    

While The Light… may be her swan song, Ian isn’t slowing down with creative projects. She is in the early stages of compiling songs for an album of previously recorded duets. “My friend Jeff and I are sitting on literally hundreds of archival tapes of everything from shows to rehearsals to work tapes. And when I started thinking about a duets album, I thought, all I would have to do is assemble the songs that I’ve recorded with other people and put out an album of those. That would be fun, because I’ve gotten to work with people like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Mel Tormé, and Chick Corea,” Ian told Songwriter Universe last week.  

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Janis Ian – “The Light at the End of the Line”