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So I have spent a lot of time recently in a Sprint store, which is a DMV-like experience. The hinge on my trusty (and under warranty) Handspring Treo cracked, so I went in to get it replaced. Much like the DMV, to get service at a Sprint store you must wait in an incredible line, which never moves because whenever a Sprint associate finishes helping someone, they go on break. Unlike the DMV, they take credit cards and try to sell you long distance.

So I am standing in line, reading my Wall Street Journal and trying to differentiate the sounds of bland pop songs from fancy polyphonic ringtones, when I realize there is something familiar about the song they are playing. I don’t know it, but it is still familiar. At first this simply seems to be that comfortable familiarity that comes with all pop songs, but then I realize that I have read about this song before. It is from Liz Phair.

Having been an indie-rock inclined college freshman in 1993, I was of course familiar with (and a fan of) Liz’s early work. It was probably as close as I got to sharing musical taste with women I went to college with. (Strangely enough, it seemed like men were the only ones who digged PJ Harvey.) So I was rather enjoying reading the scathing reviews of Liz’s new pop album. I suppose Pitchfork publishing a sarcastic record review is not news, but they still rarely rate albums a 0.0/10 (although I suppose this puts here in the not-entirely-bad company of Sonic Youth, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, The Flaming Lips, and Kiss):

It’s sad that an artist as groundbreaking as Phair would willingly reduce herself 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. As such, Liz Phair proves so ultimately unnecessary, it might as well not even exist.

Slate finds the album more boring than bad, and provides the so-faint-we-aren’t-sure-if-it’s-praise: “Nevertheless, on 18th listen, you’ve got to concede that Liz Phair, while not a very good record, is not so much a very bad record as it is a record about which it’s easy to say very bad things.” But my favorite quote was from the New York Times. Not the ‘embarrassing form of career suicide’ that everyone is repeating, but the more interesting assertion that:

When it comes to rock, we’re used to wincing at stars dressed up in packaging that masks a lack of talent. Here, the wince comes instead from watching a genuine talent dressed in bland packaging.

But amongst all this reading, I have not had the opportunity to listen to the record. (I wonder how hard it would be to rig up websites to play you records while you hear the review.) So when ‘Why Can’t I’ came on in the Sprint store today, I got to hear the thing I had been reading so much about. And I realized that it is, in fact, a really good pop song. Probably a little bland, but well written, well produced, and makes good use of standard pop conventions. (Apparently Liz was ordered by the label to write a ‘verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-double chorus’ song, which she can do better than most.) I imagine the rest of the album is as bland as people say, but I still might pick it up (the rumor is that it takes you to a website where they are going to post more interesting Phair songs). And I can understand people’s resentment of Liz failing to do something more challenging and interesting in order to sell records to teenagers, because she doesn’t feel like she’s ours anymore. But I am not sure I can be resentful over this stuff any more. I’ll just have to save up for the sell-out collaboration between Godspeed You Black Emporer and Manheim Steamroller.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2003 at 10:28 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.