Back in June, Liz Phair released her first album in five years, and as she anticipated, the shit hit the fan:
"I remember walking into the office of the publicist at Capitol, months before the record came out, and saying, 'Do you realize what's going to happen?' Of course, it went way beyond any expectations."
"Career suicide" was how the New York Times described the slick album of slutty, confessional pop created by Phair with the help of hit-making producers The Matrix. In chat rooms, many longtime fans were even more brutal than the critics. Of course, it wasn't that Liz Phair's disc was any worse than Avril Lavigne's, it was just that the two begged comparison. To a core of people, the betrayal was as complete as if Bob Dylan had rejected folk music to be a rock star (oh yeah, he did), or say if Dylan were to reject being a rock star to become a born-again Christian gospel performer (oh yeah, he did), or if Dylan were to join a boy band (not yet … but stay tuned). Phair gets that somewhere in the vitriol there is a backhanded complement: "It's flattering in a way, because people obviously give a crap about what I do with my career."
The reason people care so deeply is that, over a decade ago, Phair released the college-rock classic Exile in Guyville. Hugely influential, Guyville was the sort of album that people swear defined their lives. At the time, Phair's sexual rawness was jaw-dropping, yet even more startling was her unbelievably sophisticated songwriting, as on track after track she dissected herself against the backdrop of the withering satire and claustrophobic cool of the indie rock scene. All Music Guide concludes its suitably worshipful review of Guyville with: "If she never equaled this record, well, few could." More telling than the praise though is the use of the past tense. Phair still isn't even 40.
Phair notes, though, that Guyville was not the instant classic which people now remember:
"Guyville now has this status where it is this great work of art and it is untouchable. But when it first came out, for months I was too afraid to walk out of the house, there was so much controversy about it. I was getting slammed: 'She is not really indie. She comes from the suburbs. She dyes her hair. She can't sing.' They were crucifying me in the beginning."
Thinking about it, and she does think about it, Phair suspects that it was more than her refusal to stay in the honored past that provoked this latest backlash; it was more the fact of her returning with music so clearly meant to please a mainstream pop audience.
"I have a new pet theory that this is a phenomenon that has as much to do with what is going on in the indie world right now as it does the choices that I made on my record. I think people were looking at emo-core or whatever, and thinking that somehow it would be the '90s again. I think my record came at the right time to call that into question. Like, if Liz Phair is going along with the system right when …" Phair comes to an exasperated stop, then concludes, "I don't know. I honestly don't know. I have different theories. That's just one."
For Phair's part, despite mercilessly skewering indie chic on Guyville, she says that in no way did she intend her new disc as a provocation:
"I definitely thought this record was really, really good," she says. "I knew it was different. I knew it was totally working under a different precept altogether. But, then again, I am 10 years older and in a totally different part of my life, and in a totally different social scene. I am no longer an indie girl. I am part of the broader audience. I listen to Nelly Furtado. I am a lot more in the mainstream than I was 10 years ago. From my context, it was a really great record full of real life experiences."
Among the real life experiences that Phair, 36, seems to relish writing about most on the disc are her joyful first-person accounts extolling the pleasures of making lovers of younger men. No matter what you think of the songs on Liz Phair, it is clear that she has no regrets about abandoning exile to become a citizen of the mainstream. She certainly seems to be enjoying her 30s a lot more than most of the other grunge survivors of Guyville. And maybe it is just that: her happiness and her refusal to care anymore about gaining the approval of the cabals of cool that is provoking the most fury from hipsters.
Here's my theory: Exile in Guyville, at bottom, was the story of a young girl who desperately wanted to fit into the demi-monde she protested so bitterly against, and Liz Phair is an album by a woman who just wants Mr. Tattooed and Pierced Artist Dude to get her cappuccino order right. If they don't matter to Liz Phair anymore ...