THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,714) Janis Ian — “Insanity Comes Quietly to the Structured Mind”
Janice Ian’s follow-up A-side to the #14 “Society’s Child” was a song about suicide?! No wonder it topped out at #109. The song is “explosively poppy” (W.L. Swarts, https://wlswarts.blogspot.com/2012/11/janis-ians-sophomore-album-remains-for.html), “brilliantly conceived” (Michael Jack Kirby, https://www.waybackattack.com/ianjanis.html), “truly terrifying, as well as artistically brilliant” (Matthew Greenwald, https://www.allmusic.com/song/insanity-comes-quietly-to-the-structured-mind-mt0005714380), a “paean to the tortured loneliness of teenage life, recorded when Janis Ian was fourteen, was released as a single to follow up her hit about the trauma of biracial romance”. (David Hajdu, https://largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2020/09/david_hajdus_pl.html) If the lyrics were about, say a love affair, it would have been a hit.
Matthew Greenwald enters its mind:
Opening with a stately cello figure (not unlike some of the unreleased Beach Boys Smile-era recordings such as “The Old Master Painter”), [it] closes out the underrated Songs for All the Seasons of Your Mind with fabulous style. The song is indeed a rock/folk suite, compromising several different passages, not unlike an opera. The main melody is rock and folk based, featuring some chillingly dissonant choral patterns on the keyboards by the great Artie Butler. The song even quotes from another of the album’s songs, “Sunflakes Fall,” which adds to the chilling quality of the recording. Insanity, suicide, and teenage angst and blues are all a part of Ian’s world here, and she neatly (and disturbingly) ties all of this up in one great statement. Chronicling the actual suicide of a young girl (by jumping off of a building), Ian illustrates all of this in gory and emotional detail, and the effect is truly terrifying, as well as artistically brilliant.
https://www.allmusic.com/song/insanity-comes-quietly-to-the-structured-mind-mt0005714380
Mark Deming tells us about Janis Eddy Fink:
One of America’s most important singer and songwriters, Janis Ian melds intimate personal insights with sociopolitical polemics, and has never been afraid to share her secrets or her opinions with her audience through her intelligently melodic songs. Ian’s career has gone through three distinct stages. She had an initial burst of fame as a teenager with a precocious gift for social and political commentary as documented on her self-titled 1967 debut album and its hit single “Society’s Child.” She returned to the public eye in the mid-’70s with deeply personal songs about life and relationships . . . . In 1993, after ten years away from the spotlight, Ian re-emerged as an independent artist . . . . In each stage of her career, her lyrics were literate and affecting and her vocals have a warmth that reflects strength and vulnerability with equal eloquence. . . . [Her parents] were political activists who supported a number of progressive causes, which led to the F.B.I. investigating the family . . . . Growing up, Ian was fond of the music of Joan Baez and Odetta, often played in the house, and she started playing music at a very early age. . . . In 1963, Ian wrote her first song, “Hair of Spun Gold,” which was published in the noted folk music journal Broadside. She briefly attended the High School of Music & Art in New York City . . . and she began performing at school functions that spread the word about her talent. Soon she was making the rounds of New York folk clubs . . . . In 1965, Ian wrote a song about an interracial romance between two teenagers, “Society’s Child,” and word about the song and its young composer made its way to Atlantic, which arranged for Ian to record it with producer Shadow Morton . . . . [W]hile Atlantic opted not to release “Society’s Child,” Verve/Forecast signed to her a record deal and issued the tune as a single in 1966 . . . . The song initially met resistance from radio programmers due to its controversial theme, but after Leonard Bernstein featured Ian on a television special, Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, the single took off . . . . Ian suddenly rose to stardom, and her first album, Janis Ian, appeared in early 1967. She dropped out of high school in tenth grade to focus on her music full-time, and before 1967 was out, she’d released a second LP, For All the Seasons of Your Mind. A song from the album, “Insanity Comes Quietly to the Structured Mind,” was issued as a single, but rose no higher than number 109, and her third full-length, 1968’s The Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink, produced no hits and failed to chart. Ian stopped working with Shadow Morton[.] . . . 1969’s Who Really Cares . . . was a creative step forward for Ian as a songwriter and performer . . . [but] it was promoted poorly and proved to be her last album for Verve/Forecast. . . . Frustrated with the music business, Ian retired . . . though she soon reconsidered, and signed with Capitol, which issued Present Company in 1971. The album received little attention, but it reawakened her interest in songwriting, and she soon wrote the songs “Jesse” and “Stars.” The former . . . would become a hit when recorded by Roberta Flack . . . and the latter . . . became the title track for her first album under a new contract with Columbia. 1974’s Stars sold only modestly, but received strong reviews, and the song “The Man You Are in Me” was issued as a single and peaked at number 104 on the pop charts . . . . Ian’s second Columbia LP, 1975’s Between the Lines, became a major commercial and critical breakthrough, earning some of the best reviews of her career, rising to the top of the Top 200 albums chart, and spawning “At Seventeen,” a vivid recollection of adolescent angst that unexpectedly made its way onto AM radio and became Ian’s signature song, peaking at number three on the pop singles survey.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/janis-ian-mn0000213212#biography
Here is the single version:
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