Thirtysomething someone living in Orlando, FL with my awesome wife and two great kids.
I have two books, Unconventional (fiction about three geeks and an eventful weekend at a sci-fi con) and Poodoo (commentary on the Star Wars films and geek culture). I also tweet incessantly.
By day, I do marketing, public relations, social media, and copywriting. By night, I sleep.
Maybe Funstyle will be liberating for her; maybe, as with Self Portrait, her deck-clearing exercise will let her shake off aspects of the way she's understood that she finds burdensome. At the very least, it's a shrewd way to lower expectations. After this, whatever she does next can only be a pleasant surprise.
I would go more like a 6 or 6.5.
The problem is that the good stuff on Funstyle does not fit comfortably with the weird shitty stuff, except in the possible sense that they all at least attempt what Liz Phair has always been so good at–marrying her interior life with universal truths, and universal truths back to her interior life, in a way that’s both confessional and relatable at the same time.
The shitty stuff is so distracting from the good stuff that my first impulse is to just write about why the shitty stuff is shitty, and more importantly, what she could have done to avoid the shitty stuff in the first place…or at least, what could have been done to avoid the shitty stuff being the only thing people seem to want to write about. Which presumes that was not her intent, and maybe it was; maybe the headline on the exceptional piece by Seth Colter Walls and Maura Johnston for the Awl is correct, and she’s really saying, “Look, Internet — I’ve set myself on fire.”
But what needs to be said, and what you should take away if you care about Liz Phair and are interested in her art, is that there’s a really awesome EP hidden within Funstyle.
Liz Phair on the Liz Phair record
:
When I did the first pop record, I have to say it was fun for me. [Then-Capitol president] Andy Slater came in and we just decided to give it a shot. I felt like I had fun and learned a lot, although I certainly would not have made that record had I not been on a major.
I'm not sure I agree with your police work there, Liz.
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