Two songs have long dominated Ian’s 45-year career, the first written and recorded when she was still at school. Society’s Child was an astonishingly blunt account of interracial romance that earned her both blanket radio bans and a reputation for confronting taboos full-on. It appeared on her self-titled debut album in 1967, as did the equally controversial teen hooker tale Pro-Girl, sadly not included here.
The second of Ian’s songs that has come to define her is 1975’s wallflower lament At Seventeen, a beautifully evocative portrait of unloved and overlooked misfits; or, as Janis herself puts it, “ugly duckling girls like me”. In terms of literate female singer-songwriters, she’s up there with Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro, no subject off-limits when it comes to putting across a point of view; 1993’s Tattoo is a sparse story of a Holocaust survivor.
The 30 songs here (plus a DVD of a 1979 live show) offer a broader perspective beyond the two landmark hits mentioned above, Ian’s jazzy phrasing given a great workout on the piano balladry of Silly Habits, her clipped vowels punctuating the yearning of Arms Around My Life. Another of her celebrated songs, Jesse, has garnered dozens of covers, including versions by Roberta Flack, Joan Baez and Shirley Bassey, but none match Ian’s original for heart-twisting emotion.
