Homeless Persons' Memorial Day Top 100 Songs
​Song #55

Janis Ian
"The Mission"

Janis Ian is an American singer-songwriter who was most commercially successful in the 1960s and 1970s; her most widely recognized song, "At Seventeen", was released as a single from her 1975 album Between the Lines which reached number 1 on the Billboard chart.

Born in 1951 in New York City, Ian entered the American folk music scene while still a teenager in the mid-1960s. Most active musically in that decade and the 1970s, she has continued recording into the 21st century. She has won two Grammy 

Awards, the first in 1975 for "At Seventeen" and the second in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Album, for her autobiography, Society's Child, with a total of ten nominations in eight different categories.

"The Mission" comes from Ian's album titled, Revenge and was released in 1995. Ian sings about "Young men sleeping away their dreams' in homeless shelters, but admits "There's no place like home."

"The Mission"
Lyrics

"Jesus saves" up in neon lights
Lines are forming to the right
for a blanket, a bed
Shelter against the night
Young men sleeping away their dreams
Old newspapers 'round their feet
They were someone's child once,
just like me
There's no place like home
Inside these walls,
safe from the cold,
another night falls
What's mine is mine
So I've been told
There's no place like home
Some claim victory, some downfall
Some can make no claim at all
Bad breaks, high stakes
Alcohol
The streets are crowded with vacant eyes,
stripped of privacy and pride
How long can only the strong survive
There's no place like home
Inside these walls,
safe from the cold,
another night falls
What's mine is mine
So I've been told
There's no place like home
Give me your poor
Your tired, your hungry
All weary people
who yearn to be free
I give them hope
and mercy to all those in need
...Have mercy on me

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