The Detached Cool Of Liz Phair

Liz Phair has been around awhile, but I am not sure how many people have heard her music or are really aware of her. She was on the cover of the Rolling Stone back in her early days and the title was "A Rock Star Is Born". She seems to always be on the brink of living up to that statement, but she never seems to get over the hill. Phair is now 42 and still has the rock star look going for her, but it seems that her time might have passed her by. Not that it seems to matter, in fact to listen to her sing, you would think nothing matters to her. She is the complete opposite of someone singing with ferocity, someone that sounds like they believe in what they sing, someone that seems to care, Liz Phair sings with an "I could care less" voice-but for some reason that is part of her appeal.

She came onto the rock scene from Chicago in the early 90s, writing songs under the label Girlysound. The story goes that she was discovered shopping her indie tapes around and was eventually signed to a record deal. The big deal came when she released "Exile In Guyville", which was supposedly an answer record to the Rolling Stones "Exile On Main St." The time was right for her and she was the right indie girl for the scene. She had a kind of badass type image and did not portray herself as sweet. As indie kids do, they flock to anything new and interesting, and they flocked to Phair with her guitar and her come hither type personality. And of course, all the dorky kids from school were inticed by her lyrics, some of which are unprintable here and were more than risque and shocking when they appeared on this record. She had become the pinup girl for the high school kid's dreams, she had attained the rock goddess level, she had climbed the mountain. But, she made it sound like it was no big deal.

A few years later, whitechocolatespacegg emerged. Supposedly this record was made about having a daughter and it sounded like she had lost some of her steps in making this record. Where the previous record blasted out but remained cool, this one just kinda limped out but still had some of her cool encircling it. The song, "Polyester Bride" has become one of her staples and most interesting sounding songs back with spare guitar and her cooler than thou voice.

But then something happened...it is hard to say what for sure, but things had definitely changed. She didn't seem like the rock star the world though she would be. She seemed to become a more jagged version of Sheryl Crow or even Alanis Morrissette. Instead of standing out she fell into the "angry girl" crowd of music that was big in the late 90s and beyond. Never as scary as Bikini Kill for example, but the fire or ice that she once had was gone. To this day, she has not really recovered. She still puts out records every once in awhile, but they don't seem to do much damage to any charts. Her name is whispered, like a cool secret society, it's cool to know who Liz Phair is or who she was, but her records just aren't what they once were.

In a way, she's almost gone pop. Her last big hit that I can recall was "Why Can't I"  was unbearable. The record "Somebody's Miracle" was trash, and I do not mean trash in a good way, I mean the sappy poppy way. It was like she was scrubbed clean, and you can basically separate the two careers. On one hand you had the bad girl from her early career that wrong songs such as "Flower", "Divorce Song" and "Fire Up The Batmobile" when she was really rocking the indie charts. And then she became the pop princess. Either way, there are only a few who know who she was/is. I wonder when Liz Phair looks back on her career, will she see two Liz Phairs? In the words of her song "Extraordinary" maybe she has been and always will be "an average everyday sane psycho, supergoddess..."