Just Shoot Me #136 (revisited)

Another from the archives, from this date in 2005.

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Janis Ian’s weepy, whiney, one Top 40 hit made it’s debut today (7/12) back in 1975, as we were subjected to her song “At Seventeen”. Somehow this song made it all the way up to #3 despite being one of the most DEPRESSING songs to ever hit the pop charts. Come to think of it, isn’t there something ironic about a hugely popular song about being unpopular?

“To those of us who know the pain, Of valentines that never came, And those whose names were never called, When choosing sides for basketball… And dreams were all they gave for free, To ugly duckling girls like me”

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Theses days, I'd certainly include a photo, probably a monochrome image of Janis Ian.  Like this:

Either that, or I'd post one of my own photos with some sort of tenuous connection...

(I was 17 when this photo was taken, during my senior year of high school.  How's that for a tenuous connection!)

And I'd probably include a youtube link to the actual song.  Like this.  And a lot more links in general.

And some trivia, like the fact that "At Seventeen" spent 20 weeks in the Hot 100, 14 weeks in the Top 40, and 6 weeks in the Top 10.  And was Janis Ian's biggest hit, eclipsing her only other Top 40, "Society's Child".  And I might've mentioned other mopey songs, like Gilbert O'Sullivans "Alone Again (Naturally)" or the Bee Gees "I Started A Joke"....  Or other songs about 17, Like Stevie Nick's "Edge Of Seventeen" or the Sex Pistols' "Seventeen"....

Aside:  There's actually a couple of errors in the old post.  First off, "At Seventeen" was not Janis Ian's only Top 40.  As noted above, there's also "Society's Child", which made it to a very respectable #14 in 1967.  I also misspelled Whiny as Whiney.  And 7 years later, the link is dead.

I still agree though, there's something ironic about a hugely popular song about being unpopular.