Jezebel

I love me some Liz, and everything, but I'm even more skeptical about her writing a novel than I was about Louise from Sleeper.

"Flattering"=sarcastic?

Oh no Moe! Not an inside joke!

And this book cant be worse than
Jewel's
a
night with
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armor

Oh, Liz. Whatever happened to you? Other than that you made bitchy comments about your demographic and managed to distance yourself from any support you might have among your friends while you kissed mainstream music's ass in hope for more money? Which, by the way, backfired miserably. I would've read this 8 years ago. Now, not so much.

@ineffable.me: Ha! Did you ever see that interview with, I think Kurt Loder (or was it the other guy whose name I'm blanking on?) when he asked her when she wrote that people "walk by the homeless with such casualty," if she really meant "casualness." "Oh, no, I meant casualty. They're casual about it." Hee hee.

Liz Phair is the soundtrack to my existence since the age of 12. I've stuck with her through the hard times, even when I went into a Starbucks and saw her album for sale there, and I cried for about an hour. That was a dark, dark day.

@TruculentandUnreliable: Kurt Loder correcting Jewel's grammar in her book was one of my favorite Loder moments ever.

So WHERE is HE now?

That illustration = payback for her last few albums?

How is Avril Lavigne's production team "evil"?

while you kissed mainstream music's ass in hope for more money?

And what exactly is wrong with this? Money's money, and she pulled off the "slutty reinvention" thing much better than some of her compatriots, e.g. Jewel and Nelly Furtado.

I once wrote Liz Phair a letter after reading about her stance against illegal music downloading that basically went:

"Dear Ms. Phair,

I've purchased 3 of your albums. I would have never heard of your music if it wasn't for internet downloading, though..."

But I'm lazy and never sent it. Some of the things she says and does rubs me the wrong way...but then I listen to whitechocolatespace egg or Exile in Guyville...and all is forgiven.

Is this gonna turn out like Ethan Hawk and the Hottest State? I'm not at the age anymore that I can support my fave celebrities no matter what literary atrocities they make.

Oh dear. I remember reading a Liz quote during the dreadful aftermath following the Lavigne-producers-present- Liz-Phair where she said something to the effect of 'It's one thing being bad for a small group of people, another for a larger,' and sort of raising my eyebrows at the rationalization.

I guess as for whether or not I'll be reading it...I'll probably pick it up just to see if she can lure back into an emotional landscape that was once very appealing to me.

@Superawesomerad: They are evil because they make awful things that people think of as music and it makes all the girls stupider.

Maybe it's the Ethan Hawke Effect, but... no, thanks.

@briardahl: What's this? Louise wrote a novel? I'm almost glad I didn't know.

@Superawesomerad: I think they're evil because they overproduced her into fucking oblivion, and Avril Levine is shit. I have a serious problem with her selling out because she was an icon to a lot of young women, and while she certainly doesn't have to remain obscure and poor for us, I certainly have the right to be pissed off about the whole thing and feeling betrayed.

@I ain't your... Masokist: @briardahl: actually, i think louise wrote a few...from what i heard, they weren't too bad, but i never bothered. as for liz, we broke up after whitechocolatespaceegg.

Really Rolling Stone? A Rock-n-Roll Star was born? Liz Phair? Uh, no.

I've always loved Liz Phair, even during the last five years. I wasn't crazy about the albums, but I still loved her because, despite her poor musical choices, she has always stood her ground and never made excuses. She's always said that being a musician is a career, and she's a single mom and wanted to make music that made money so she could raise her kid. She's also been honest about hating indie rock and being a part of it.

She's also writing a new album, and is on the same label as Radiohead and My Morning Jacket. I'm hoping they won't screw her over the way Capitol Records did.

God how I hope this turns out well. I listened to "Exile" and then "Liz Phair" yesterday, and it hit me how produced the latter sounds. Like, there are strings in there, why? And she doesn't need that, and sounded better without it. But I don't know if there's a market for "smart girl turned 30-something OMG when did I start complaining about 'kids today'" music, unless you want to listen to Sheryl Crowe and her square of TP. I don't want Phair to keep flailing to try and keep up with the cool kids, but I don't want to read some sad "Where are they now?" piece in a few years and find out she's working retail in Reseda. Her music has stood up well because of her lyrics, I think, so I hope she can translate that wordplay into fiction.

@TruculentandUnreliable: That "with such casualty" incident with Kurt Loder is all I think of when Jewel is mentioned (which thankfully, is a pretty infrequent occurence these days).

@ineffable.me: Kurt Loder did a voice on the Simpsons last night in an episode about the 90s. Good old Kurt Loder.

@Jerseylicious: haha yeah I watched that and I said the same time. Oh i love Kurt Loder... so WHERE is he NOW?

@fakehardcore: I've read a couple of them, they're ok. I like her better as an author than as the self-alleged token female star of Britpop, but that's mostly because I had a girlcrush on Justine Frischmann long before I knew who Louise Wener was.

I just want to say regarding the actual post: thank you Jezzies for bringing this over here without causing the stabbity feelings the Idolator headline about it inspired.

@Superawesomerad: It's kind of an open question whether she pulled a bunch of money out of it, actually. That work with The Matrix didn't sell very well by major-label standards, but it still sold a hell of a lot more than indie numbers, so there's some chance she brought some money home. On the other hand, though, I have no idea what her contract was like, and there's every chance she didn't recoup the money the label poured into promoting the thing, and wound up in the hole -- which is how a lot of underperforming major-label rock bands wind up technically owing money on their records.

(Haha there is a great old breakdown of how that works by Steve Albini, a guy who wrote in the early 90s that Liz Phair was the worst thing ever, and then somehow now has a bunch of praise for her in the Guyville reissue.)

@TruculentandUnreliable:

I guess I'm just not as dramatic as you. Benedict Arnold? That was betrayal. A singer switching genres some years after the height of her popularity? Eh, not so much. Hell, Madonna does it every other day.

As for Avril Lavigne, it's a continuing source of amusement to me that so many people get so angry over this utterly unthreatening and middle-of-the-road pop singer.

I can't abide Liz Phair. She wanted to be seen as this sex-positive rebel, when she was really just co-opting men's attitudes towards sex. She wanted you to think she was urban, when in fact she went to New Trier High School in Chicago's wealthiest North Shore surburb. She wanted to be seen as "punk rock", but she also spent an entire Chicago magazine bragging about how cute her son Nicholas was and how she's a MILF.

In the end her persona, and her music, amounted to nothing more than cliche piled on top of cliche, piled on top of cliche.

@gunshy007: Rolling Stone has long been guilty of subtituting banal trite-iscisms (tritisicisms?) for genuine insight.

@Superawesomerad: I'm prone to hyperbole. And I hate bad music, so there you go. Plus, Liz Phair was a fucking role model to me when I was a teenager, so yeah, I do feel kind of betrayed, especially when it was a calculated move by her, not just a change in taste.

Also, I wouldn't give a shit about Avril Levigne if she didn't try to pass herself off as "punk" and then not know who the Sex Pistols are. Ignorance pisses me off even more than bad music.

@TruculentandUnreliable: Avril Levine is like an actress who dresses the part, but doesn't research the role. It's not like she hasn't the time to educate herself between nightclub jaunts. If she did, her music might be something worth listening to.

@langtry: I'm not sure how much she pretended to be "urban," really -- I mean, when you start off dining out on your story about going to summer camp with Julia Roberts, you're not exactly fronting like you came from Cabrini Green or anything. About a minute thirty into the Girlysound tapes you can pretty much tell she's suburban.

@TruculentandUnreliable: What's more punk than being a punk who doesn't care about the Pistols?

I like how RS just throws in L7 to give the Women in Rock feature a little integrity--you know 'cause when I think women in rock my mind totally jumps to Madonna and Courtney Love.

@TruculentandUnreliable: First of all, the Sex Pistols sucked, so it's not like Avril's music would have been appreciably better had she known who they were. Second of all, who cares if she pretends to be punk? The two groups don't really overlap, it's not like Avril Lavigne's demographic would be attending Plasmatics concerts were it not for "Sk8er Boi", so who cares what she pretends to be in front of her 14 year old fans? At least she's not getting busted for coke or flashing her snizz for the paparazzi.

@langtry: Actually, I'd argue that smart people aren't known for making good rock music.

@recidivicious: ha! i'm soooo with you on that. i'll take justine over louise any day, mainly cause i like my (post)punk...eh..(brit)pop. yeah. i hafta admit the menace really grew on me.

@ineffable.me: *embarassing* but I was watching the simpsons last night and kurt loder's name was in the credits. He was playing a guest character or something...

@Superawesomerad: Hah! You have bested me there!

@Jezebabe...is a stern and angry midget!!!!: how is it embarrassing to watch the simpsons?

@TruculentandUnreliable: I totally agree. While not personally a fan of Liz Phair, you can't deny that in the 90s, she was held up as this icon of new feminist attitude, the "I fuck people and don't care, I own my own sexuality and existence" that I know a lot of women my age then took to heart. It was really encouraging to see a woman who was willing to write songs that were sexually aggressive (without being coy, hence why I don't think Madonna really qualifies) and brutally honest with a real hardcore sensibility, and then a decade later when she wasn't making any money anymore, sell that whole ideal out for a couple of panty-shot cover art and frivolous frothy pop songs.

@Superawesomerad: I don't think it would be better. I'm just saying that it's really shitty to assume the mantle of a fucking subculture you don't belong to and that was all about subverting popular music and commercialism. I see her as the embodiment of how commercialism wrings out any value in a subculture and exploits it for all its worth.

I might not like Liz's latest albums (though "Liz Phair" had a couple of decent tracks on the second half not produced by the evil-Avril team) but I have to give her props for being straight up about wanting shitloads of money. I miss the old songs/style, but there's a fuck-you-I'll-do-what-I-want quality to her decision that's not completely out of left field.

@langtry:
I also recall Eddie Vedder supposedly being all tormented in high school without a friend to call his own & then it comes to light he was voted Most Popular...I just never felt Liz Phair was that compelling to listen to or watch perform. Like I stated before, the fact that Liz only discovered The Rolling Stones through her BOYFRIEND & that did not happen until she was in her 20's is unfuckingpardonable.

Somehow, I think Liz Phair would be amused that she only got 39 comments.

A minor talent by any standard. If you have to try to get attention by writing a song about ejaculate, you're down there on the B-list anyway. But her stuff is tired, period.

Yawn. Kirstin "songwriting is about shutting up instead of talking" Hersh kicks Liz's ass all day long.

@Noam: Oh man, are we really criticizing Liz now for having not enough impact on the indie-rock scene? "A minor talent" did not produce Exile in Guyville, and if you're going to say that about her, then at least have to balls to judge her on her best work and not the self-titled money-grab.

Liz is my favorite musician of all time. I am glad she is doing something with her time that is bringing her money, and, hopefully, some joy (because her last two albums may not have brought her both). She's a pretty good character portraitist, so I can't even say I'm surprised she's working on a novel; I just hope it's good.

Nothing will ever beat Exile in Guyville, nothing. Her recent stuff is a sellout for sure, but how, exactly, does that mean that when you listen to Guyville it isn't excellent?