A bit of soul?
A bit of funk?
Or some classic melodic pop?
One of the things that grab my attention in songs are lyrics. Not just any old words but sometimes when they can explain something well, that you have been trying hard to articulate.
Paul Simon is good at this.
Other lyrics I like is where there’s A story in there, like an excerpt from a film. This is one of them.
No surprise that I’m not a teenage girl from the mid-West of America in the 1970s, but this song takes you there.
And about being a social outcast in high school. Again not something I experienced, but it takes you there.
Also touches on the shallowness of beauty, and hints at the impacts your looks have on your life.
I think it’s beautiful, a work of art. Perhaps the best acoustic song that didn’t come out of the Laurel Canyon set.
Not a Soul song, but a song full of soul.
I don’t know much about Janis Ian. Wikipedia gives me:
- The song never charted in the UK
- The next year she was sent 461 Valentine’s Day cards in reference to the lyric….“Of valentines that never came”.
Janis Ian - At Seventeen
Live Midnight Special 1976
www.youtube.com