There are songs that capture the feeling of a period in any persons life. Few are able to transcend their era or any future musical fad. I was a couple of months older than seventeen when this was released. Its clearly written from Ian's personal experience of being the untypical young woman on the cusp of adulthood. It was also able to speak beyond gender, because it spoke to me. An inexperienced young man, who knew he was gay, had had my crushes on unobtainable men, at the time scared of the consequences of being who I truly was. So, yes, this spoke to me, I recognised what she was describing with such emotional truth and precision. Of knowing you would never conform to the normal gender cliche, nor the accepted life or lifestyle expectations . Over forty years later it still touches me deeply.
Janis Ian had by 1975 been songwriting for over a decade. Rising through the late 60's singers songwriter boom. She'd had her first hit in the USA with Society's Child in 1966. But it was not until nearly ten years later with At Seventeen that she had her one and only hit in the UK. The universality of its theme transferring and crossing all boundaries. You could say, in retrospect, that this song was one of the last flush of 60's singer songwriter boom, before punk made it feel irrelevant the following year.
At Seventeen is a beautifully written song, full of a lot of the pain of feeling distanced, the unresolved emotions, the 'small town eyes' gaping at you. Ian is by nature someone whose clarity in her song writing and the often confrontational subject matter she chose to write about, meant she'd rarely receive the accolades and top 20 success that it deserved. This is just one of those times when she broke through.
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
And murmured vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems
At seventeen
Whose name I never could pronounce
Said, "Pity, please, the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve"
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company
And haven for the elderly
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received
At seventeen
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
The world was younger than today
When dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me
At seventeen
No comments:
Post a Comment