Bobby Evers writesRediscovering our Record Collections: Learning To Lean In to Liz Phair

by Bobby Evers

The early oughts was a tumultuous time. George W Bush was president, we were gearing up for a second concurrent war, and all the best celebrities were picking sides. The internet was democratizing music scenes in ways that were still new and hard to predict, showcasing indie artists in Omaha and the Pacific Northwest, and music fans primary concern was coolness and authenticity. After 10 years of releasing increasingly top 40ish albums, Liz Phair, a once powerful indie artist going full-blown mainstream pop was most certainly not cool.

And the critics were the first to let us know. In their album review, PopMatters called her a "soon-to-be-has-been," writing: " this once-adored darling of indie rock is a mere shadow of her former self.... The resulting album, Liz Phair, is a highly overproduced, shallow, soulless, confused, pop-by-numbers disaster that betrays everything the woman stood for a decade ago, and most heinously, betrays all her original fans." 

In the Pitchfork review, the author eviscerates her eloquently with: "It's sad that an artist as groundbreaking as Phair would be reduced to cheap publicity stunts and hyper-commercialized teen-pop. But then, this is "the album she has always wanted to make"-- one in which all of her quirks and limitations are absorbed into well-tested clichés, and ultimately, one that may as well not even exist."

Both writers are male. Both call her different forms of shallow, vain, degrading, vapid.

But now that we live in an age where pop artists like Beyonce, Kesha, Taylor Swift, and Carly Rae Jepsen are celebrated for their strengths and contributions, and their albums are evaluated and debated as works of pop art, I think it's time to take a second look at Liz Phair's 2003 self-titled album, that brought her so much scorn. It brought her both top 40 success, getting airplay on my hometown radio station, and also lost her her entire fanbase.

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