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Female Singer-Songwriters: Crafting a Contradiction
Every summer, it seems, I go through my Liz-Phair-regret phase. It’s probably because on our near-annual roadtrips, Liz Phair’s first three albums — “Exile in Guyville,” “Whip-Smart” and “whitechocolatespaceegg” — are still, to this day, in heavy rotation in the car’s CD player.
Besides being full of fun, quirky and complex music, they are powerful and risky feminist statements. And that’s not because they explicitly promote some agenda of empowerment — but because Phair deftly picks at life’s complexities; she is full of desires and doubts, strengths and weaknesses.
My love of these albums made Phair’s sudden but deliberate and self-aware attempt at pop stardom (by eliminating the quirks and dumbing down the lyrics) all the more devastating. It’s been awhile since she made that transformation in her fourth album, “Liz Phair” (2003), and boggled the minds of fans and rock critics alike. If you want to revisit that cultural moment, see the vitriolic critiques by Mim Udovitch in Slate or, from one of her early advocates, Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune.
What makes this summer’s regret phase particularly poignant is that Liz Phair seems to be going through it as well. Or at least that might be a pop psychologist’s take on her 15th-anniversary reissue of “Exile in Guyville” and the accompanying tour in which she plays the entire album. Greg Kot uses the opportunity to revisit the past himself, while Jim Derogatis of the Chicago Sun Times saw her kick-off concert at the Vic Theater and, well, didn’t like it.
While Phair might be trying to make up for some lost time, she still doesn’t seem to fully “get it” — to realize her own contradictions.
In an interview with Vulture, a New York magazine blog, she recalls the rebellious mindset that inspired “Guyville”:
At the time, I was seething at the surface. I was a boiling hot tub of oil ready to scald if I could, ’cause I pretty much spent my youth trying to be perfect for everyone in a very preppy sense, and then abandoned that and went all the way to the dark side. I rejected everything and everyone I’d ever known before.
And maybe more significantly, she realizes the very gendered context of that rebellion. Vulture comments that — in a documentary about the making of “Guyville” — Phair is shown to be surprisingly “pretty surrounded by guys.” Phair explains:
I really was in Guyville. When I went back to the documentary, the one unifying thing with the guys is, they all talk a really long time, and then I get a tiny little word in edgewise. They were all like, “This is what’s good,” “This is what you should like,” and I was like, [sing-songy] “fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.”
But then, in response to a question, she tells us about the cover photo shoot — and we now can see the seeds of her later, unfortunate compromises:
That was so funny. I turned in a still from a friend of mine’s student film for the cover of the CD — it was an orgy of Barbies floating in a pool. Matador was like, “What the FUCK is this?!” They called up Nash [Kato, of Urge Overkill] and asked him to help. So he comes to me and goes, “Lizzy, listen, the record’s great, but they’re not digging this. Why don’t you go into the photo booth, take off your shirt, leave on your necklaces.” And before I went into the bathroom, he was like, “Oh, and remember to put lipstick on your nipples,” because I have very light-pink nipples, and I figured it was some weird porno thing he knew about. Like, “Wow that’s why the nipples always look so good!” So I went in the photo booth, and for the first couple of shots, I was sort of shy. He really wanted me to just be like sex.
What’s funny to me is I was never that disturbed by the cover of “Exile” (and the more explicit photo insert). I always took as a fitting accompaniment to the raw eroticism of the album. But to know it had its origins in such an abdication of her feminist standpoint and her agency, that just sucks.
If I could, I would refer Phair to a recent post (and the broader oeuvre) of Gina Barreca, a professor of English and feminist theory who blogs for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Barreca has tried to explain to supposedly “post-feminist” generation — everyone from the singer Jewel to the writers of The Rules — why their choices, no matter how independently made, matter.
Her discussion of personal choices obviously connects with public choices by celebrities such as Phair:
When you cave, you are buying, however subtly, into the idea that it is easier to please the master than to learn mastery — that you are getting what you need by the privilege of your sex rather than by the right of your humanity. You have to be nice to the guy who pumps your gas, checks your oil, or buys you a house and pays your bills. You literally can’t afford not to be. He’s “providing” for you because he’s happy with your company. If he becomes unhappy with you, he has every right to kick you out of his house and refuse to pay your bills. You are there, not by right, but by privilege.
Not that feminism has everything neatly sorted, as the Brits would say; there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Not only is it “easier to please the master than learn the mastery,” but even when you have the mastery, as someone like Phair certainly does, it somehow makes more sense to hide your light under a bushel.
All is not lost, though. Last week I read a heartening essay from Suzanne Vega in The New York Times — where she talks about what it means to have had a little pop stardom — and how she doesn’t let it define her.
I happen to own about five Suzanne Vega albums, collecting most of them — she would be happy to know — long after her 15 minutes had past. I should have brought them on the road trip.
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June 27, 2008 at 8:25 am
What a blast to have my recent rant on feminism for The Chronicle of Higher Education discussed in this smart, sharp venue. I’m in excellent company and delighted to be on this collective road trip…
Cheers,
Gina
June 27, 2008 at 9:35 am
“Feminist” disapproval of Liz Phair is always so moralistic. “Abdication of her feminist standpoint”? There’s always a puritan streak in the disapproval of Phair’s images, like feminists only liked Liz’s ’sexual empowerment’ when it was in the lyrics. Ie. when it was all ‘in theory’. When a grown woman poses for a few sexually provocative (but hardly pornographic) album covers, then she is attacked for it. And yes, the cover to the self-titled is probably what got most people riled up–many of the songs are in the same vein as her earlier material.
It’s not very rock n roll of you. But then feminism is a political approach, and is useless when it comes to genuine criticism–you know, where presumed ‘intent’ of the artist is meaningless, and where you have to set aside your biases and analyze the actual artwork?
June 27, 2008 at 10:17 am
First, I don’t think there is anything wrong with being “moralistic.” Feminism is, as you say, a political and ethical standpoint. I’m not interested in talking purely about the aesthetics or the pleasures of music. This is PopPolitics, after all.
Now, I do take a little umbrage at the idea that feminist critics of Phair are being “puritanical.” Again, the images of Phair on “Exile in Guyville” did not disturb me — or most feminist critics, I imagine. They seemed perfectly fitting to the album — the lyrics to which reveal a complex, but ultimately “empowering” eroticism.
What is bothersome is what she reveals to be the origins of those images — in which she suppressed an explicit feminist cover (barbie dolls in a pool) under pressure from the record company and under the guidance of a guy who wanted her to sex things up.
I also would take major issue that the lyrics to the songs on her self-titled album are “in the same vein” as what came before. If we want to “analyze the actual artwork” as you say — and perform a close reading of her lyrics — I think it’s undeniable that not only are the lyrics of her fourth album rather vacuous but they are almost entirely consumed with pleasing men or being overwhelmed and overcome but her adoration of men. As I’ve written about before, I might as well be listening to Kelly Clarkson.
And that is in sharp contrast with much of her previous work — which placed her in a much more assertive position in her relationships and — more importantly — talked about a lot more than just guys.
Please tell what on her last two albums even comes anywhere near the use of point-of-view and subtle metaphors of — let’s pull one out of a hat — “Girls’ Room”:
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the sky
I’m sleeping in the water
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room tonight
Here comes Tiffany
My best friend, Tiffany
Wearing a size too small of sweater
Me and Tiffany
Dressing up pretty
We love to ride, we love to canter
My best friend Tiffany
She is so popular
We’re going from site to site and pool to pool tonight
And we hear Terry say that Tricia’s okay
But she ought to learn to shave her bikini line better
And Tauren was born, like her mother in a storm
And Tracey’s been away forever…
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the sky
I’m sleeping in the water
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room
I’m sleeping in the girls’ room tonight
June 27, 2008 at 11:44 am
First of all, those lyrics to Girl’s Room really don’t hold up on the page. The bikini line is kind of funny, but otherwise there’s no overall idea or really great line that sticks out. If people focused more on the artwork and less on the politics, they could see that not all of Liz’s early stuff is that great. Look at the lyrics to “Never Said” and tell me what real depth they have that distinguishes them from one of the Matrix tracks? There’s really nothing happening there, but it gets a free pass because it’s on Guyville.
To see a better Phair lyric that holds up better on the page, look at Stratford-on-Guy. Some good lines, like the one about the landscape rolling out like credits on a screen, plus the content is less typical for a song lyric.
Moralistic and political arguments only work if you agree with a particular set of morals or politics, plus they are often entirely outside of the artwork itself. Most of the political arguments swirling around Phair, whether anti-capitalist (indie vs. corporate) or feminist, really have little to do with why she succeeds or fails on a given record.
Phair’s last two records don’t work for artistic reasons. The feminist/indie stuff is irrelevant, but that’s what the focus is for most people. You could still pluck some ok tracks from the last two. The real reason for Phair’s decline is probably because she wrote most of her best songs in her youth, with her Girlysound tapes. Many of them were re-recorded for her subsequent albums until the self-titled. Her latest albums have more generic music and lyrics. Whether she was on an indie label, or recorded w/ “lo-fi” production values, or wrote from a ‘feminist’ perspective really has nothing to do with that kind of decline–which is in the songwriting, the only thing Phair had going for her musically.