([Every time I see your face
I get all wet between my legs
Every time you pass me by
I heave a sigh of pain])
Liz Phair did not invent the concept of the Sardonic Female Songwriter. She was not the first woman to create and cultivate the persona of an angry woman who was able to craft songs that strategically lobbed smart grenades at the notions of masculinity and feminism. She was not the first female songwriter whose attractiveness could initially disarm her male audience from realizing what she was really singing about. She was not the first female artist to attempt to express the pain caused by men, and that men, in fact, can be gigantic dickheads that are worthy of bile and scorn.
([Every time I see your face I think of things unpure unchaste I want to fuck you like a dog I'll take you home and make you like it])
What Liz Phair did do was expand and distort and experiment with these things with the 1993 masterpiece Exile In Guyville, her musical and ideological counterpoint to the 1972 Rolling Stones masterpiece Exile On Main St. The Stones’ album drips with masculinity and revels in a type of raw power that most men just inherently understand, and the music on the album suggests a kind of sexual infiniteness—that, even though the title includes the word “exile,” that doesn’t mean that there is a lack of female company.
([Everything you ever wanted everything you ever thought of is everything I'll do to you I'll fuck you and your minions too])
Exile In Guyville, on the other hand, is filled with a relatable pointedness that any red-blooded disciple (or sideline admirer) of Patti Smith or Virginia Woolf or Dorothy Parker (or even the Suicide Girls) would appreciate. By using Exile On Main St. as the basis for her counterpoint, Phair not only adds a layer of depth to rock music in general (by using as her canvas the Stones’ double album masterpiece, her counterpoint and her endgame pricks your ears and cocks your head like a dog; it forces you to notice her, it forces you to recognize the balls she has) but she is also doing something (however inadvertent) more grand, more timeless: she created an album that is witty, angry, feminist, accessible, and, most importantly, she did it with an image and a persona that was not goth, emo, overly shy, tragic, dramatic, or a buzzcut-and-leather-boots type of caustic. In short, Liz Phair essentially produced an album that is the musical equivalent of a religious experience. A breath of fresh air, or any other cliché you can think of.[1]
([Your face reminds me of a flower kind of like you're underwater hair's too long and in your eyes your dick's a perfect "suck me" size])
Phair’s voice might sound a little raw at times (sometimes, her voice can sound like it has a tinge of gravel, or a just-smoked-a-few-cigarettes feel to it) and she may appear to deliver her lyrics and look like she is too cool for the room, but make no mistake: Exile In Guyville is completely accessible. And the song from it that is probably most emblematic of the album—and of Phair’s early work in general, which is easily her greatest work thus far—is “Flower.”
([You act like you're fourteen years old everything you say is so obnoxious funny true and mean I want to be your blowjob queen])
“Flower” runs a hair over two minutes long, includes two distinct vocal tracks (one in which Phair sings in a high voice while the other one is pure monotone), and its music is comprised exclusively of Phair’s guitar being distorted to the point that it sounds like this song consists of a bizarre wind instrument and a bizarre percussion instrument. This lo-fi arrangement runs in stark contrast to “Let It Loose,” its counterpart on Exile On Main St., which includes background singers, Dr. John on piano, and appearances by a trumpet, a trombone, and a saxophone (in addition to the foundation that the Stones themselves provide). Lyrically, “Flower” appears to be from the perspective of the woman Jagger is singing about in “Let It Loose”: the woman “on your arm, all dressed up to do you harm,” the woman who causes the tears to be let loose from the guy (possibly from fucking him like a dog?).
([You're probably shy and introspective that's not part of my objective I just want your fresh young jimmy cramming slamming ramming in me])
“Let It Loose” is one of the best songs the Stones have ever written; it is easily one of their best five-plus minute songs. The music is layered and polished perfectly, and Jagger’s gospel- and soul-inspired crooning on this track is arguably the zenith of his vocal range. And with Jagger’s impassioned pained screams and the references to crying it is his best feminine song. Conversely, with “Flower” you have a terrifically heightened role reversal: Phair represents both the orthodox form of masculine (“I’ll fuck you like a dog/I’ll take you home and make you like it”) and the feminine-as-masculine form (“I want to be your blowjob queen”). These two things are further reinforced by the duality of her lyric delivery in that the chorus is endlessly repeated in the same high voice which suggests a kind of poetic infatuation (“I heave a sigh of pain”), whereas the spoken word, monotone lyrics represent the no-bullshit bravado that probably resides inside some region of every man’s mind.
([Everything you ever wanted everything you ever thought of is everything I'll do to you I'll fuck you 'til your dick is blue])
“Flower,” probably more than any other song that is on this list or will appear on this list down the line, is a song that requires a different kind of context. If you were to listen to this song as a standalone song without any background it would probably come across as overly crass, an excuse to use shocking phrases like “I’ll fuck you ’til your dick is blue.” But to know the background beforehand helps appreciate it on a different level. None of this is to say that this song is great solely because it is the music counterpart to “Let It Loose” or because it is highly sexualized. “Flower” is important and is deserving of a spot in the Pantheon because Liz Phair is important. She may have been felled by the dual forces of an inability to create a second masterpiece, and the Sheryl Crows of the world but the former is something that has haunted many many men—men ranging from Ralph Ellison to Axl Rose—whereas the latter is just the byproduct of natural capitalistic cycles. Tuesday Night Music Club may have won the battles but Exile In Guyville won the war. History will surely favor Phair over Crow in terms of great art of the late 20th century. And “Flower” will probably be one of the main things that tips the scales to Phair’s favor: a song that few women would have ever made, a song that revels in its role reversal, a song that would’ve made Dorothy Parker blush.
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[1] Back in May I devoted an entire volume on the Overlooked Songs site to Main St. and Guyville. Go here to read the introduction to the volume, or go here to read all 15 posts dealing with both albums.
