Customer Reviews

Janis Ian

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An album few heard upon its release and even fewer have ever heard of now...but a real, real gem. Janis Ian's self-titled album is a mixed collection of upbeat soft rock tracks and truly memorable and melodic piano ballads like "Tonight Will Last Forever", "I Need to Live Alone Again" and the incomparable "The Bridge" (one of the most beautiful compositions of her career.) With this album Ian (perhaps better known as a guitarist) reveals herself to be a truly masterful and accomplished pianist. Her keyboards on "Streetlife Serenaders" border on virtuosity and her jazz-influenced piano work on "Silly Habits" add a new dimension to her already accomplished songwriting skills.

Lyrically the album is another confessional journey through the everyday life, love and struggles of the artist with occasional detours into childhood reminescences and nostalgia with tracks like "That Grand Illusion" (a track about a love affair with the cinema) and "My Mama's House". All in all, a beautiful job.

The production, like so many other sparse recordings from the late 1970s, may sound dated to younger audiences who are used to the clean digital sounds of today...but the sincerity and simplicity of Janis Ian's songwriting and arrangements and the true beauty of good melodies and harmonies holds up and bears repeated listening even after these many decades. If you can obtain a copy...please don't let this largely ignored collection of eleven outstanding tracks pass you by.

I have treasured this album since it was released in 1978. This eponymous set features Janis Ian's best piano playing and some of her most heart wrenching lyrics. The singing and harmonies are outstanding as well.

The achingly beautiful Hopper Painting and Do You Wanna Dance stand out as slow, moving pieces that show the writer poignantly reaching out but perhaps not expecting to find her love match. Silly Habits is perhaps her best jazz song and That Grand Illusion should have been an Adult Contemporary hit. I Need To Live Alone Again may be the saddest song in her repertoire, but coming from Janis, the pain seems so real, yet we can believe in her strength to overcome heartache and continue delivering powerful, gorgeous music.

I'm so glad to find that this is finally on CD at a reasonable price (though I paid a fair share more for the handwritten lyrics to a couple of these songs when she held a charity auction in tribute to her mother in 1998).

Janis Ian is much much more than At Seventeen and Fly too High. She has one of the best voices and talents. I looked for this CD for over 5 years, and got kinda disappointed when I knew it could only be sold as part of a set. Though this is not her best known album, I can assure it's the best, more balanced and warm. Congratulations to Amazon for having it. You made my day...and my month!

Several of the tracks on this CD are so enigmatic that I still am not sure what they're about, but that's what happens when you deal with a songwriter who is also a genius. My favorites on this CD are "Do you wanna dance?" containing some wonderful & hot Latin rhythms; and "That Grand Illusion". The beautiful "I need to live alone again" always makes tears come to my eyes, it is sadness and loss at its best. In it the line: "who will love me when I die?"--the most lonely, heart-rending words I've ever encountered. Nobody does it better than Janis Ian.