Liz Phair
Liz Phair (Capitol)

originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2003

It’s nice to be liked
But it’s better by far to get paid
- “Shitloads of Money,” a rewrite of “Money” from the Girlysound Tape 2

Really, when, you think about it, what’s most amazing is that it’s taken so long for Liz Phair to sell out. For God’s sake, she’s been telegraphing this career move since before she announced how short she was on the opening track of Exile In Guyville, so those complaining about how Liz Phair is a blatant and hollow Top 40 move are fools. There has been ample warning along the way for anybody who could be bothered to notice it: a Gap ad here, a Mac ad there, “Shitloads of Money” and Phair herself practically standing up in public with a megaphone yelling, “I am planning to sell out!” Yet the naysayers still make their presence known, disclaiming Liz Phair for failing to live up to a standard by which the artist herself has made it abundantly clear that she has no interest in being measured.

It’s not surprising, then, that the folks who claim to know Phair better than she apparently knows herself haven’t got a clue as to how to listen to the new record. For the simple fact is as follows: if we accept Guyville for the once-in-a-lifetime achievement that it was (and Whip-Smart for once-in-a-lifetime afterglow) and take it on its own terms, Liz Phair is a really good album, easily superior to 1998’s inconsistent whitechocolatespaceegg . It won’t define the zeitgeist, it won’t serve as a shibboleth of cool amongst college radio DJs and it won’t send a coterie of music nerds into a classic-rock cross-referencing frenzy. What it does is something so simple and elegant that many artists and listeners neglect to even acknowledge it as an option: it provides entertainment and occasional transcendence in the form of a well-crafted and worthy album by an artist staring down the start of her second decade in an increasingly fickle business.

And if that statement wasn't blasphemous enough, I’m not even sure that it’s necessary to discount the four songs cowritten and produced by Avril-makers the Matrix to say it without fear of contradiction. Granted, the opening “Extraordinary” is a watered-down the-lady-doth-protest-too-much declaration of things that Phair has never really had to tell us in so many words, and “Favorite” torpedoes itself through the simple expedient of a bad conceptual metaphor (memo to all songwriters everywhere: there will never, repeat never, be a good song comparing yourself or your lover to underwear. Ever. Period. Stop trying.), with a whiff of bad poesy not helping matters (“Why I never threw it out, I’ll never know exactly why” gets this year’s “Live And Let Die” award for lyrical redundancy). But catchy they are indeed, and the other two show Phair’s personality clawing through the lyrics, even if she can’t make a dent in the high-gloss Top-40 production. “Rock Me” offers sexed-up excitement (“I’m starting to think that young guys rule”) as well as a witty acknowledgement of Phair’s cult celebrity that could serve as a preemptive volley against her bitter fans. “Why Can’t I?,” meanwhile, is such a carbon copy of Lavigne’s “Complicated” (the arrangement and production are identical, and sharp-eared listeners might even notice that it uses the exact same chord progression in the chorus) that a lot of people have missed a lyric that, while it may be the subtext of teen-pop (of all pop, actually), hasn’t ever been spelled out quite so explicitly before: “Here we go, we’re at the beginning/We haven’t fucked yet, but my head’s spinning.”

And with that, Phair is screwing her way all over this disc. The wound-up and roaring “My Bionic Eyes” has her bragging, “I scored again last night/I said, ‘Thanks for the drinks. Nice party,’ then I turned out the light,” while the coyly thrumming “It’s Sweet” would be a snapshot of the 20 minutes just before Whip-Smart’s “Chopsticks” if she wasn’t so into the guy that she knows she doesn’t love. Purists may decry the hormone levels of some of the songs or take-me cheesecake pics littering the packaging as imposing Britney-level marketing tactics on a Joni-level artist, but it’s entirely of a piece with the Phair they’re trying to preserve, a woman who spent a great deal of Guyville taking control of her own sexuality. And she has an excellent excuse this time out: this is, after all, a woman who has just found herself single once more and is reminding herself of the pleasures (and terrors) of her newfound freedom. Having been on each side of the marital divide, Phair knows how both teams play and is ready to use that knowledge to her benefit.

The real measure of the album’s achievement, however, is its acknowledgement, both explicit and implicit, of how such libidinous pursuits no longer happen in a vacuum but have very real implications for those in Phair’s orbit. “Little Digger” finds Liz the mother trying to explain to her son in the gentlest, most detail-free manner that there will be men in her life that are not his father, and if it’s as condescending in tone as The Onion A.V. Club suggests it is, then, well, that’s part of the situation, too, isn’t it? The album hits its peak with “Friend of Mine,” which is about as clear-eyed a divorce song as you could imagine, where there’s really no reason for the disintegration of the relationship except for the simple fact that the two people involved no longer love one another. In its economy, unflinching directness and melodic invention, it rivals “Fuck and Run” for the honor of being the best song she’s ever written. It’s certainly more assured, and when you think about it, that should scare the hell out of you.

That’s still not enough to stave off the blacklash, of course, which means that good songs like the meat-and-potatoes “Good Love Never Dies,” the anthemic and solipsistic “Love/Hate” and “Firewalker,” which combines Guyville verses with a whitechocolate chorus, are sure to be totally ignored along with the career-high material that won’t get heard because too many people have their fingers in their ears. In the face of those doubting Thomases, I’ll fall back on the same argument that I’ve had with countless friends who’ve pilloried Phair for an album that they’ve refused to listen to: it’s a rather curious sellout indeed that includes a song, and a surprisingly sweet and jaunty shuffle at that, called “Hot White Come” (no matter how the Wal-Marted back cover presents the title). I repeat: Liz Phair’s Top 40 move has a song on it that is devoted to the non-procreative pleasures of semen. She might not make it; there are no sure things, especially not these days. But the evidence on Liz Phair fills me with confidence that if it does work, Phair will have hit the top of the pops on her own terms.

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