I’ve been browsing the blogosphere and twitter feeds to find that the universe is making a very serious mistake. I decided to make a diagram explaining this mistake as clearly as possible.
A "Phair" appraisal of Liz Phair's awesomeness as compared to you.
As you can see, Liz Phair’s awesomeness is clearly much bigger than you are or ever will be. Not only that, but it’s pink.
Judging by the reviews I’ve seen by amateur music enthusiasts around the web, I see some interesting trends. First, they didn’t listen to the album before saying that her new album Funstyle sucked. Second, Liz hit the nail on the head in the last track on the album, “U Hate It”, when she says the following:
No wonder that you hate it, ’cause it’s all about you… funny you should say that, ’cause it hates you too.
She may not have directed that at the general listening population, but I think she very well could have. I could summarize my responses to most of the “haters” out there with the sarcastic remark, “I’m so glad you’ve expressed your informed opinion, since your opinion is what really matters.” For an explanation of the sarcasm, consult the graph above. Do you honestly think Liz cares what you personally think? She’s had so much shit thrown at her professionally, and I’m glad to see she’s still “got her own thing; feel it, it is strong.”
Third, no musician has ever created a song that everybody likes. Not everybody likes Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” (despite it’s YouTube view-count), not everybody likes their respective national anthem, and not everybody likes your own personal favorite band of all time. The deal is that I’ve listened extensively to all of Liz’s released music, and even I (the Phair-head extraordinaire) have had difficulty with a few of the songs* on each of her albums. The fact is that after extensive listening (or perhaps a few months away from those tracks), the tracks I originally viewed cautiously became some of my favorite tracks by her. It’s all in cycles, but one thing I know for sure: Liz has something special that you don’t see enough in musicians these days, especially the ones that reach the masses. Liz tackles this very issue on Funstyle, implying that it’s not really fair that a certain four-letter-word of a “publishing house of Ursa Minor” (the RIAA) controls and influences so totally the musical culture to which we are exposed most prevalently. They pick what you can listen to and what will end up in the record stores, and Liz gave a huge middle-finger to that obscene practice.
Find your own culture. Love it, hate it, think about it. Just don’t jump on the bandwagon with what an overwhelmingly vocal portion of the Internet is claiming. Her album’s only $5.99, it’s DRM-free, high quality, and not restrictive to iTunes or Windows Media Player or wherever you usually get your music. It’s also independently released by the artist herself, which is always a plus.
One more word for all of the sites saying that Funstyle is “experimental” and that makes it bad. Any musician worth his or her salt is experimental in some way. If they aren’t experimenting with their music at least a little bit, then they are nothing but cookie-cutter copycats. If this album weren’t “experimental” then I don’t think I’d be praising it quite so heavily.
Finally, I’d like to share my own personal favorites from the album, which I have to yet to see in any review out there. “Smoke”, “And He Slayed Her”, and “Satisfied”. I hope she performs “Satisfied” on a late show.
* The songs that have gradually become my favorites are as follows:
- From Exile in Guyville, “Shatter”
- From Whip-Smart, “Support System”
- From whitechocolatespaceegg, “Only Son”
- From Liz Phair, “Love/Hate”
- From Somebody’s Miracle, “Got My Own Thing” (quoted above)
