Janis Ian will release new album ‘The Light at the End of the Line’ on 21st January 2022.
Released on her own label Rude Girl Records, the album will be Ian’s final one. It’s also her first album of new material in 15 years. The first two singles – “I’m Still Standing” and ‘Resist’ – are out now.
‘The Light at the End of the Line’ bookends a kaleidoscopic catalogue that began with her 1967 self-titled debut at age 15. The songs are intimate portraits of getting older but wiser (“I’m Still Standing”), of knowing when to stand up and not take any more shit (‘Resist’), of celebrating life’s fleeting beauty (‘Swannanoa’), of exalting in your true identity (‘Perfect Little Girl’), of paying homage to a lifelong hero and her demons (‘Nina’, as in Simone).
‘The Light at the End of the Line’ feels like a victory lap for an artist who has nothing to lose, and nothing left to prove. You hear that in the risks Ian took in both her lyrics and the inspired production choices.
“I love this album,” Ian says. “There is an element of, ‘This is the absolute best I can do over the span of 58 years as a writer. This is what I’ve learned. And I realised that this album has an arc, and I’ve never really done anything like that before.”
Janis Ian began her iconic career at age 14 when she wrote her socially and politically impactful song “Society’s Child” about an interracial romance between teenagers.
She has been nominated for nine Grammy awards and won two: one in 1976 for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female (‘At Seventeen’) and one in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Recording (‘Society’s Child: An Autobiography’).
