In 2003, the release of ‘Liz Phair’ was met with copious amounts of sexism, misogyny and ageism. On the album’s 20th anniversary, we look back on how the industry failed one of its brightest stars.
is very much a product of its time—with production choices that haven’t uniformly stood the test of time, but the infectious hooks and nostalgic charm are enough to make the album worth revisiting 20 years later.were split between The Matrix, Michael Penn, R. Walt Vincent and Phair, herself. At the time of release, much of the blame for’s sound and lyrics was given to The Matrix, who were just one year removed from their 2002 breakthrough with Lavigne’s.
On the song, Phair moves between crushing confessions and evocative verses sung from her son to his prospective, potential step-fathers . Like the rest of, “Little Digger” may sound distinctively different from anything Phair had released to that point, but there’s no doubting that this is the same Phair who wrote “Divorce Song” and “Fuck and Run”; the same Phair who deconstructed sex and relationships with clinical precision and a keen eye set agaze towards affecting intimacies.
But critics missed what made “H.W.C.” subversive in its own distinct way: Phair’s use of such graphic imagery on a mainstream pop album offered an expansive blueprint for the genre’s future, as well as a stark rebellion against the music’s then-reliance on conjuring innuendo in order to channel female sexuality .
“H.W.C.” was also clearly intended as an act of parody—at least partially. The sing-songy approach that Phair takes when delivering lines like “You’re the best magazine advice” and “It’s the fountain of youth / It’s the meaning of life” are clearly a shot at women-dominated industries—specifically the ways they flatten and reduce the realities of aging and sexuality, often in ways that reinforce existing, sexist stereotypes and gender roles.does actually contain one .
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