I see the totality. At different points, I bring forth one or the other approach based on whatever world I’m in. I think artists should be allowed to experiment. I would be bored to death if I just did the same thing over and over again. In my book, it’s different things, the same body. You can find Liz Phair in Girly Sound. If you can’t hear it, you’re really not listening.
But your songs have changed structurally, as well. For instance, I’m more of a Whip-Smart person, and one reason for that is the way you’d just repeat a line 30 times over. Was that something you were just trying out?
You’re a smartie, and that was, for that record, the defining feature. That was the gig I was playing on that record, I was trying out mantras. When you repeat something over and over again, does it become more clear, or does it lull you out? That’s what I was into. I wanted to know how many times you could say it, how the meaning would morph.
But that’s also gonna be the road not taken for me. You could talk to Kim Gordon or Aimee Mann and we could have this discussion: is it rich for you that you’ve sort of tracked the same territory over and over again? It really could have been what I chose to do, but I just went all over the place. And it probably could have been rich, and the meaning could have kept deepening or changing. It could have been my life, and probably a very happy one. I went the other way. I went flashy and dashy.
LIZ PHAIR | Paradise, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | August 20-30 at 8 pm | $25 | www.livenation.com
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