Singer, songwriter, science fiction author and syndicated columnist Janis Ian is one of those rare combinations of imaginative talent mixed with musical prowess that only comes along once every generation. For this reason, Ian is celebrated nearly five decades after she first started performing, and her iconoclastic status in sci-fi and folk is permanent.

Born as Janis Eddy Fink on April 7, 1951 in New York City, New York, a young Janis was almost certain to become a performer of some sorts. After moving to New Jersey as a child, Janis attended the New York City High School of Music and Art. With her father a music teacher and her musical influences including Joan Baez and Odetta, Janis wrote her first song by age 12.

At only 13 years of age, Ian wrote a moving song about society’s disapproval of interracial relations at the time titled Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking). Impressed with the song, the label released it three different times in an attempt to force it to catch on. The first two being failures, Society’s Child finally became a hit on the third release.

The song rose all the way to number-14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967, and although Ian received many death threats and created all kinds of controversy over the song, she stuck to her guns and pushed the envelope for her entire career, never shying away from taboo issues of the mainstream.

Janis continued to sporadically record music for the next few years, and she was a cult phenomenon even if the mainstream didn’t approve. In 1975, Ian released the song At Seventeen – it would become her most popular recording in the US. The song hit number-one on the Billboard charts and she won a Grammy.

Not only was the song a Grammy-winning, career-making tune, but it earned Ian the honor of being the first-ever performer on Saturday Night Live, and the album it was released on, Between the Lines, also hit the top spot on Billboard’s Album charts. The album eventually went platinum, which was an impressive feat for the era.

Ian rode the wave of her already established music for a few years, but in 1979, she released the album Night Rains and the single Fly Too High, for which she was nominated for another Grammy Award but lost out.

Although she was - and still is- a popular artist of the underground folk scene, Janis would only chart with one other song for the rest of her career – Under the Covers, released in 1981.

Janis Ian was absolutely huge in other locations around the world, namely Japan. For American audiences, her musical content was always considered a little too taboo for everyone’s tastes.

Years later, Janis broke from her seeming silence and started divulging personal information about molestation and her life as a closeted lesbian. She became a science fiction writer and a columnist for The Advocate, a LGBT magazine.