A very powerful song, indeed.
A nice album. Miracle row is the best song. A talented young artist that kind of fizzled out. Not as talented as Laura Nyro who had more covers than you can imagine. She died early of cancer.
I really like At Seventeen and Jesse.
Great songwriter but I quit listening as she became more progressive.
A fine song. You want to reach back in time and drag her out of her depression.
I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth
And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say “come dance with me”
And murmured vague obscenities
It isn’t all it seems at seventeen
A brown eyed girl in hand me downs
Whose name I never could pronounce
Said: “pity please the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve”
The rich relationed hometown queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company
And haven for the elderly
So remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debitures of quality and dubious integrity
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen
To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
When dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me...
We all play the game, and when we dare
We cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say: “come on, dance with me”
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen
Ian was the prototype for the wimpering liberal snowflakes of today.
The teen years have got to be some of the toughest years of a person’s life.
Before adolescence everything still seems possible, your looks, your height, your social status - you’re a kid, what you will become is still full of possibilities.
Around 15, 16, 17 the die is pretty much cast, the hopes of a few years before have either been realized or more likely shattered, and you’re not mature enough yet to deal with the disappointment.
It takes another decade to accept who you are and make the best of it.
In many ways those years can be tougher on girls.
When Janis was 14 years old, she wrote her first big hit “Societies’ Child” Released three times from 1965 to 1967.
It was about an interracial romance forbidden by the girl’s mother, and frowned upon by her peers and teachers. That was a taboo subject back then in many areas of the USA.
Janis received hate mail and death threats in response to that song. A radio station in Atlanta that played the song was burned down in the summer of 1967.
There were many race riots across the states during the summer of 1967. I personally recall the events in Detroit Mich. during that same time. It was during that summer that I learned what the word “Sniper” meant, never having used the word before.
Major heroine of The Sixties.
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