Liz Phair

It's hard sometimes, when a band has released a brilliant album - like, say, Exile in Guyville - to accept the fact that the following decade of uninspired and occasionally terrible music is not slow spot, or an aberration.  Sometimes, you keep listening to the Pinkerton's of the world, and tell yourself that a band with an album this good in them must get lucky again sometime.  But sometimes, you just have to accept that someone got lucky, and it's never going to happen again.

Exile in Guyville has some truly brilliant songs in it.  "Fuck and Run" knocks me out everytime, and I find "Flower" running through my head more often than appropriate.  But we all need to accept the fact that Liz Phair has devoted her life to destroying our ability to love her music.


One of the things that the last decade has shown us about her is that a lot of the things that were praised about Guyville - the bracing, profane confessionalism, for example - was really a gimick.  I don't know any other way to interpret "Flower" now that she has released two albums of mall-teen shock-rock.  It used to be possible to hear "Flower" and think that it was an extremely naked and honest look at sexual fantasies from a female perspective, but when Phair writes a song as obvious and clumsy as "H.W.C." there's no other conclusion - this girl is now, and has always been trying to sell records.  The lo-fi thing, the indie rock thing - it's all been an angle.

Another way to say it - "Flower" was, maybe, an honest song about sexual fantasies.  "H.W.C." is about what she thinks people want her fantasies to be - it is exactly as calculated as "I Kissed a Girl", just with a less effective hook.

I'm sorry to say all this, because "Why Can't I" isn't actually a bad song.  It's not a great song, but it's no better or worse than your average pop song - it has a hook, not a bad guitar riff, etc.  But Phair hasn't committed career self-immolation with "Why Can't I" - it's all the other crap she puts on the album.

I actually find it's best to imagine it's someone else singing, who happens to be named Liz Phair.  Otherwise, everytime I hear her sing "I want a boyfriend" I won't think of the plaintive, hurt, and sad voice singing it, but of a hipster girl trying to play every hipster guy at once.