Songoftheday 7/10/24 - Get a load of me get a load of you, walking down the street and I hardly know you..

 

 

"Why Can't I" - Liz Phair

from the album Liz Phair (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song comes from singer/songwriter Liz Phair, who grew up in the Chicago area, where she eventually returned to start a music career in the early 1990s. With connections from friends, Liz was signed to the indie label Matador Records, where she released her debut album Exile From Guyville in the summer of 1993. With a fresh lo-fi sound that backed cutting wordplay about making her way from small town life to the big city, trying to find her identity, and basically trashing the men along the way, Exile became a critical and underground success. While it spent only a single week on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #196, it would sell close to a half million copies, and create such a cult following that in 2020 Rolling Stone magazine had it at #56 in their poll of the greatest albums of all time. (Listen to "Fuck and Run". You'll be thankful.)

Phair followed up with her sophomore effort Whip-Smart the following year. Also a critic's fave, the record peaked at #27 on the Billboard 200, though selling slightly less than the debut even with a distribution deal with Atlantic Records. However the set scored her first radio hits, with "Supernova" rising to #6 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart, and placed at #78 on the all-genre Hot 100. The title track also made the alternative list at #24. At the 1995 Grammy Awards, "Supernova" was nominated for Best Female Rock Performance with Vocals, losing to Melissa Etheridge's lesbian longing in "Come To My Window". Also in 1995, Phair contributed a song to the bi-polar soundtrack to the film Higher Learning, which straddled hip-hop and rock. Her song "Don't Have Time" earned her a second Grammy nomination in that same category, which went to Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know" (you can't blame either result). 

After a four year break Liz returned with her third release on Matador (this time paired with Capitol Records) Whitechocolatespaceegg in 1998, which saw her tackling more mature themes but keeping the indie-rock vibe. The set landed at #35 on the Billboard 200, but again sold less than its predecessor, which was something both the record company and Liz were keen to.

In 2003, and now strictly on Capitol proper, Phair reinvented herself on her self-titled fourth disc (as acts usually do with non-debut subsequent releases). With an eye on the current trends on mainstream radio, Phair took on an assortment of producers and production teams, most prominently Michael Penn (of "No Myth" one-hit-wonder fame) and the Matrix (Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards, and Scott Speck), who assisted pop-punk princess Avril Lavigne's burst to fame with her debut disc, and in particular the top ten hit "Complicated". In fact, the lead single from the record, "Why Can't I", could almost be up for plagiarism if it wasn't co-written by the same people (with Liz assisting). The song lopes along at the mid-tempo "slacker pace" as Liz offers the tea that she's contemplating an affair with a guy who's also involved. With a salacious lead in to the chorus singing "we're already wet and we're gonna go swimming", it segues into a sing-along chorus that seems gears to a much younger audience. And that it did, to throngs of girls who never even know Exile In Guyville, but were tuned into the snarky girl attitude. She's trying to convince the guy to leave his so she can leave hers but on the lead-up to the chorus again she tosses out that "we haven't fucked yet, but my head's still spinning", which leads me to believe this may all be one-sided. With a flashy music video that puts liz as a pin-up model through a series of record sleeve mock-ups, which VH1 ate up, and Liz found at least fleetingly the mainstream success she had aimed for...

"Why Can't I" landed Phair's first and only top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 2003. On the radio, the song peaked at #10 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, and #7 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list (spending 29 weeks there). Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in New Zealand at #37. The Liz Phair album, released in June of that year, tied her Whip-Smart peak at #27 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, selling just under a half-million copies but going "gold". 

 

A second single from the eponymous album, "Extraordinary", tried even harder for exposure, getting tied to the Kate Hudson film Raising Helen and getting on the soundtrack to the TV show Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. White it went to #28 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart and #14 on the Adult Top-40 list, it only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #111. 

Liz's second album on Capitol, Somebody's Miracle, came out in 2005, but only spent a couple weeks on the Billboard 200 missing the top-40 at #46. The sole radio success from the project, "Everything To Me", managed to get to #27 on the Adult Top-40 radio chart. 

Leaving Capitol, Phair would release her next album Funstyle independently in 2010. Her most recent full-length new record, Soberish, finally on Chrysalis Records in 2021. Two songs from the record reached Billboard's Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") rock radio chart: "Good Side" (#24) and "Spanish Doors" (#31). 

(4/10)

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Here's Liz appearing on The Tonight Show promoting the album...

next up, a live acoustic performance for a radio station...

 

 and lastly in concert in 2018...

Up tomorrow: Country singer feels the vibrations.