Janis Ian is calling The Light at the End of the Line her last solo studio album—but don’t mistake that for an ending. “I don’t want to shut the door on working with others,” she tells me, “but I’ve said everything I wanted to say—finally—in the way I wanted to say it.” That alone took 15 years since her last solo LP.
Across nearly an hour of conversation, Ian opens up about reaching a point in her life and career where proving anything to the world stopped mattering. “The monkey on your back as an artist is: are you living up to your talent?” she says. “For the first time, I feel like I did.”
The new album is raw and immediate, in part because many of the tracks are first takes or work tapes—more spontaneous than polished. “It’s probably the least artificial record I’ve ever made,” she says. “Maybe the most authentic.”
The fight to be heard—literally and figuratively—runs deep in Ian’s career. “Everyone said women couldn’t sell as many records as men,” she recalls, with a mix of disbelief and weariness. “Whitney Houston blew the roof off that idea, but you still don’t see women heading major labels or being featured on the covers of guitar magazines.” Ian has spent decades confronting that inequality head-on, whether through who she works with (shoutout to mastering engineer Piper Payne) or by writing songs like “Resist” that challenge the boys’ club culture embedded in the music industry. “There were so many times where people would say, ‘That was great… but you’re a girl.’ And that was the end of the discussion.”
Her recent single “I’m Still Standing” was originally released in 2014 as part of a charity project, but finds new meaning now. “It just felt like the right lead single—because I am still standing. And I wanted it to reach more people.”
Songs like “Resist,” meanwhile, are fierce and uncompromising, written in a rage born from decades of casual sexism. “I started with the Yoko Ono line,” Ian explains, referencing Woman is the N**** of the World*. “We’re 50% of the population, and we’re still dealing with this bulls***.” And yet, she finds a way to drive her point home with humor. “I wanted it to make people dance—then go, ‘Wait… what did she just say?’”
“Nina,” one of the record’s most haunting songs, is in fact about Nina Simone, though Ian initially resisted writing it. “I tried to make it about anyone but Nina,” she admits. “She was so difficult to love, but I adored her.” The track is built on a demo vocal—the first time Ian ever played the song—because, as she says, “I couldn’t beat the rawness of that take.”
She talks fondly of collaborators like Vince Gill and Diane Schuur, and the Better Times Will Come Project, which roped in nearly 200 artists remotely during the pandemic. “It reminded me how much I love collaboration,” she says. “But I’m done with the grind. I want to stay home. I want to write.”
As for that final track—“Better Times Will Come”—Ian says she’s clinging to optimism. “History swings back. We survived the plague, we survived wars. We can do better than just survive again.”
She may be stepping away from the album-tour cycle, but make no mistake: Janis Ian isn’t going anywhere. “I’m still a writer. Still a singer. Still a player,” she says. “None of that changes.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
