Janis Ian - Society's Child (Lyrics) [HD]

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Janis Ian sings 'Society's Child' from her 1966 Verve Forecast album 'Janis Ian'. The lyrics are in the video and below with comments about the song.

[Vinyl/Lyrics/11-Images/WAV]

Society's Child (Singer: Janis Ian)

Come to my door, baby
Face is clean and shining black as the 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 anymore, 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 their smirking stares
Cuttin' deep down in our affair
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 listenin'
Gonna raise my head up high
One of these days I'm gonna raise my glistenin'
Wings and fly

But that day will have to wait for awhile
Baby, I'm only a 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 wanna see you anymore, baby

Songwriter: Janis Ian
[Lyrics from Musixmatch]

Wikipedia states:

"Society's Child" (originally titled "Baby I've Been Thinking") is a song about an interracial relationship written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Janis Ian in 1965. According to Janis Ian, Atlantic Records refused to release it although the company had financed the recording; the artist took it to Verve Records who agreed to release it.

The song's lyrics concern an interracial romance – a still-taboo subject in mid-1960s America. Ian was 13 years of age when she was motivated to write and compose the song, and she completed it when she was 14. Released as "Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)", the single charted high in many cities in the autumn of 1966 but did not hit big nationally until the summer of 1967.

The lyrics of the song center on the feelings of a young girl who witnesses the humiliation that her African American boyfriend receives from the girl's mother and the taunts that she herself endures not only from classmates but also from educators whose hypocrisy leads them to "laugh their smirking stares" while acting as "preachers of equality". It closes with her decision to end the relationship with the boyfriend because of her inability to deal with the social pressure. In her autobiography, Ian made this comment about the concluding line: "I didn’t want the breakup for their relationship to be just society’s fault. I wanted the girl to take some responsibility for it, too."

In 1964, Ian lived in East Orange, New Jersey. Her neighborhood was predominantly populated by African Americans and she was one of very few whites in her school.

I saw it from both ends. I was seeing it from the end of all the civil rights stuff on the television and radio, of white parents being incensed when their daughters would date black men, and I saw it around me when black parents were worried about their sons or daughters dating white girls or boys. I don't think I knew where I was going when I started it, but when I hit the second line, "face is clean and shining black as night", it was obvious where the song was going. I don't think I made a conscious decision to have the girl cop out in the end, it just seemed like that would be the logical thing at my age, because how can you buck school and society and your parents, and make yourself an outcast forever?

Leonard Bernstein's producer saw Janis perform "Society's Child" at The Gaslight and scheduled Ian to perform the song on Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, an April 25, 1967 CBS television special. After acknowledging the controversial nature of the subject, Bernstein praised the musical qualities of Janis Ian's "marvelous song":

"Society's Child" contains many of the musical joys we've talked about, and some we haven't – like fascinating sounds, both natural and electronic, like a strange use of harpsichord, and that cool nasty electric organ. There are astonishing key changes, and even tempo changes; ambiguous cadences, unequal phrase lengths – the works! (...) So it would seem that the kids of our pop generation have a lot to say.

On October 23, 2011, Ian performed the song with Ryan Adams and Neil Finn on BBC Four's Series 2 Episode 4 of the series, Songwriters' Circle. She stated that she conceived the song when she was 12, wrote it at 13, published it at 14, became known at 15, and was a has-been at 16. The song was released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States. Ian went on to say that a radio station in the 1960s was burned to the ground for playing it and a writer at the Boston Herald was fired for writing about it.