Edit for headphones. Written and recorded in 1965 and released in 1966. Janis Ian (born to a Jewish family in New York City as Janis Eddy Fink) was born April 7, 1951. She completed the song at the age of fourteen. The original title for the song was "Baby, I've Been Thinking". The song would have been a national US # 1 hit if it wasn't for the racial problems that were still haunting the US in the mid sixties, causing various radio stations to refuse to play the song, as it was about the then-taboo subject of interracial romance.
This was about the 10th song Janis wrote. Her first was a song called "Hair Of Spun Gold," which was published in Broadside when she turned 13. Broadside was an underground magazine that published folk songs by artists like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger before they hit the mainstream. They invited her to sing it at one of their periodic shows they put on in Greenwich Village, where it got a huge reaction. Broadside kept asking Janis back, and "Society's Child" became one of the songs that became part of these performances.
Janis didn't write this about a particular person: "My parents were the complete opposite of the parents in the song. They wouldn't have cared if I married a Martian, as long as I was happy... I felt bad for my dad because everyone assumed he was a racist."
YouTuber Richard Wieder wrote: "This song had trouble getting air play, but a New York dj, Murry the K of WNEW AM had the courage to put it out there and deserves some recognition."
SOCIETY'S CHILD
(Janis Ian)
Come to my door, baby,
Face is clean and shining black as night.
My mother went to answer you know
That you looked so fine.
Now I could understand your tears and your shame,
She called you "boy" instead of your name.
When she wouldn't let you inside,
When she turned and said
"But honey, he's not our kind."
She says
I can't see you any more, baby,
Can't see you anymore.
Walk me down to school, baby,
Everybody's acting deaf and blind.
Until they turn and say, "Why don't you stick to your own kind."
My teachers all laugh, the smirking stares,
Cutting deep down in our affairs.
Preachers of equality,
Think they believe it, then why won't they just let us be?
They say I can't see you anymore baby,
Can't see you anymore.
One of these days I'm gonna stop my listening
Gonna raise my head up high.
One of these days I'm gonna raise up my glistening wings and fly.
But that day will have to wait for a while.
Baby I'm only society's child.
When we're older things may change,
But for now this is the way, they must remain.
I say I can't see you anymore baby,
Can't see you anymore.
No, I don't want to see you anymore, baby.
®© UMG
(All rights reserved by the copyright owners. This nonprofit fan-made video is solely to promote awareness and interest in the artists and the music.)
