[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 another conflicting force. Her parents usually disapproved of Jimmy or Eddie or Johnny, and made vague but forceful class distinctions to keep the lovers apart. Their objections were met with either rebellion or death. Only Janis Ian capitulated in "Society's Child," breaking the mold. (p. 77)

Outside of a few songs written by Shirley Owens and the Shirelles, Shirley Ellis' dance numbers, and a few songs Lesley Gore wrote after the teen vogue had subsided [in the late sixties], the majority of the teen singers were interpreters of other people's material. An adult, predominantly male sensibility codified the teen genre laws.

George [Shadow] Morton discovered and produced the one exception, Janis Ian, the prodigious teenaged singer-songwriter whose folk-based melodies and social concern went beyond the pale of teen sensibility.

Ian was part of a new generation. She identified more with Bob Dylan than with the Shangri-Las. Since she was sixteen years old at the time, she was the first and only authentic teen composer and writer who singly created her own songs.

"Society's Child," the song that flung her to the attention of a large audience, was a statement that blended the social concern of the folk movement with the teenaged feeling of helplessness. The parent's disapproval in this case is backed by the clout of an entire society. The boy is black. He comes to the girl's house, to her mother's consternation, and the mother forbids her to see him.

The song was rough. The writer did not simplify an adult perception into teen terms, she was already there. She had cut through the fluff to a real problem, one that might not be solved by growing up, even though she does hold out the hope for change. It was a brilliant coup by Janis Ian that revealed an innate talent that would have surfaced even if the song had not become a succès de scandale. (p. 90)

No other song had faced that racial issue, what if your daughter married one? A teenaged white girl! A black boy! Her mother closes the door to him; it was dynamite, even though the girl acquiesces. She obeys her mother, accepts her judgment, since she is, after all, only "society's child."…

It was a teenage lament. It was not written by the adults in the Brill building, the songwriters' factory … in New York. A real young girl had written it and she had the promise of a brilliant writer. Because of the promise, more than the song's actual merit, Janis received an inordinate amount of attention….

Janis Ian's songs at the time were bitter to the point that they could only have been developmental, the natural depression of the late teens…. [Producer Shadow Morton] brought out some of her adolescent strength, but she was too original an artist to go teen. Her songs were protest songs, concerned with a rapidly changing minority: teenagers. (p. 215)

[Janis Ian] did not take part in the change in popular music from the sixties to the seventies. She remained in the background while other songwriters, singing their own songs, asserted their personal vision and changed the hit formulas of popular music. (p. 216)

[With "Jesse"] Janis Ian was a commercial songwriter once more. She joined producer Brooks Arthur for a run of excellent albums: Stars, Between the Lines, and Aftertones. (p. 230)

Her songs were, by new standards, sentimental, regressive, and promoted attitudes that were against the better interests of women, so said the doctrinaire fringe of the women's movement who demanded adherence to its principles by every woman writing. Janis' "You've Got Me on a String" was singled out….

If a theme persists throughout her work, it is the feeling of being an outsider. "Jesse" finds her urging a lover to come home; "At Seventeen," she's the high school outcast; "Stars" is a view of the loneliness of fame; and "In the Winter" is a chance meeting with a former lover, a song that could have been sung by Edith Piaf, such is the mettle of the undaunted yet vulnerable heroine. (p. 231)