![Janis Ian - "I'm saying that it's going to be my last solo studio album because I can't see [me] doing better" Photo: Gerard Viveiros](https://www.rte.ie/images/001ac70a-800.jpg)
Singer-songwriter Janis Ian has told Miriam O'Callaghan on RTÉ Radio 1 that she is looking to the future with the release of her last solo studio album, The Light at the End of the Line, this week.
The album is released on Ian's own Rude Girl Records this Friday.
On Sunday with Miriam, the At Seventeen star explained why she had made the decision for The Light at the End of the Line to be her last solo studio album, 55 years after her first record.
"I spent my life since I was 14... I spent my life fulfilling other people's expectations - gladly, I'm not whining," the double Grammy winner explained.
"But I've been with major labels all that time. I've always been under the pressure of write the album for two or three months then record the album for two or three months then put out the album and tour for six months. And it's been pretty unrelenting all my life.
"So 15 years ago, I realised that I was now an independent artist and I didn't have to be at the mercy of everyone else's schedule and I decided, quite consciously, that my next album would be my best. And if I couldn't do my best and if I couldn't do 11 songs - or as it turned out 12 - that I felt were as good as anything I'd ever written, then I wasn't going to do a record.
"So I started a whiteboard with a list of songs that I was working on and as I completed a song I would add it to the list or I would take something off. And then one day during lockdown I looked at the list and I thought, 'My God, I've got an album'.
"Then it just became, 'How do I get Better Times Will Come done?', 'How do I get Resist done?', 'How do I write a song to my fans that says, as clichéd as it sounds, I really do love you and I really do appreciate all the years that you've stuck by me and here's a farewell statement?'"
"Because you're saying it's going to be your last one as well, is that right?" asked the host.
"I'm saying that it's going to be my last solo studio album because I can't see [me] doing better," Ian replied.
"I'm 71 this year. And I'm lucky that my voice has held up. I'm lucky that I still have the energy because it takes an enormous amount of energy as you know to do anything in communications. But I don't want the pressure on myself of, 'I've got to top this'. So I remove that pressure, I do my tour and then I get to go back to living under the radar.
"I'm at the point in the US where I'm far too old for anybody to pay much attention and a song like Resist doesn't get played here even on public radio because it frightens people, I guess - I don't know why.
"Something like I'm Still Standing is a nice way to go out. The Light at the End of the Line is a nice way to go out without saying, 'I am now no longer being creative'. Because the creativity, as you well know, doesn't stop.
"I have books I want to write. I have stories I want to write. I have songs I want to write - but I'd rather write them for other people at this point."
