Let's Be Phair

Liz Phair can certainly generate an argument, but until now I'd never heard someone attempt to insult her by saying she's not Sheryl Crow: Crow has never written a lyric that anyone could call, with a straight face, "brilliant." And neither has Phair for some time, but some time ago is important here, because nostalgia is why I, for one, will still go see her show (despite her Britney headset and other weirdness last time). Because Exile in Guyville is about a lot more than "emotionally unavailable men" (see above link again). It's eloquently about that and about so many more aspects of being a young, creative, smart-but-periodically-fucking-up-big-time, possibly emotionally unavailable woman.

It's about going to extreme lengths in doomed efforts to please, about wanting to be pretty but not wanting to want to be pretty, about tricks boys use to intimidate you and how they can work even though you know they're tricks, about how arguments with a significant other can devolve from specifics to sweeping accusations of worthlessness, about wanting (sometimes really wanting) sex but what's so wrong with wanting a little affection along with it?

And unlike her latest album, which unfortunately features not one but two songs heavily featuring the word "miracle" (and right in a row!), her first had a lot of songs that sounded really different from each other, and they were all her. True, nothing she's done since has been half as good. But if she now comes across as a soccer mom who should, but won't, give up the remnants of her "cooler" past, well, that too is probably something many of her fans and peers can relate to. I wish (and still have hope) that she could do something great again, but I'll always have Guyville, which sounds as good now as it did in '93. And I still wanna be mesmerizing too.