Aside from the know-it-all-ism that you’ve described, how did the dude overload that inspired Guyville affect your coming up in Chicago?
I actually became a better songwriter for it — they do know a lot of good music, and they exposed me to a lot of good music. I had my own go-tos challenged. Maybe in some ways in later years, my writing has suffered from the lack of that pomposity. My natural style coupled with the pressure cooker I was in to live up to these musical ideals that these guys had espoused was a winning combination. Could I immerse myself in that again? No way in hell.
Was there anything you liked about being in “Guyville”? Did a community of dudes provide anything that a bunch of girls couldn’t?
It’s less “what did I get out of it” and more “what did I suffer through.” Nobody let me talk! Even in the documentary, every single one of them is so fidgety and anxious to start talking again. They would politely wait and let me talk — Ira Glass wasn’t like that, and John [Henderson] wasn’t like that, but the music dudes were like, “Shut up and let me talk now.” I used to have to shut up and listen all time, and it was crazy frustrating — but I did learn a lot.
I read an infamous letter Steve Albini wrote to the Chicago Reader in 1994 to ream their music critic, Bill Wyman, and to point out that you were “A persona completely unrooted in substance, and a fucking chore to listen to.” Then I read the shitstorm that ensued in the letters section and was struck by how fiercely Chicagoans defended their scene.
It wasn’t so nice. But Steve Albini was one of my favorite interviews in the documentary. I had to acknowledge that, in a lot of ways, he’s been correct the entire time. It’s a tangled Web because all these people I had problems with, I was also a fan of. We were all in this complicated soup. The fact that people cared so dearly and passionately about their scene back then is admirable and rare. Now in our culture you are being fed “cool” all the time. Back then you had to find cool. Once reaching the shores of cool, you felt like a survivor.
In the wild, when Liz Phair comes up, there’s usually a distinction inserted about “Old” Liz Phair (Guyville) versus “New” Liz Phair, in part because of obvious changes in the production values, but also because the songs are way less oblique. Do you acknowledge distinctions like that?
Oh, I totally get it. I hear the difference. I hear the pop period. The thing that I do that no one else does is, I never start with Guyville — I go all the way back to Girly Sound, which was kind of silly and pop back then. I went serious on Guyville, I went rock on Whip–Smart, there was the pregnancy and storytelling on Whitechocolatespaceegg, then the pop manifestation on Liz Phair, and then the fucking compromise disaster of Somebody’s Miracle.
