["Between the Lines"] is one of those rarities—a best-seller that focuses on musicianship. Though not without its flaws, "Between the Lines" has substance and depth, qualities absent from Ian's adolescent career and her hit song of those years, "Society's Child," a bristling tirade against adult injustice. This precocious hit was followed by "Janey's Blues," "Honey Do Ya Think?" and "New Christ Cardiac Hero" which zeroed in on dishonesty, exploitation, lack of communication, even suicidal impulses. At 15-going-on-16 Ian became the urchin at large, pinpointing the hypocrisies of society, ever at the mercy of its mores, wounded by its snubs….

Her songs of the late sixties, lacking even a ray of sunshine, began to sound vaguely familiar; moreover, her accompaniment, often awkward, could not support her often powerful verbal images. No wonder that her career seemed to terminate at age 20.

In 1974, Janis Ian's "comeback" was launched with the...