Speaker 1: Pushkin from her gritty nineteen ninety three debut album, Exile
Speaker 1: in Guyville, Liz Phair helped lay the foundation for a
Speaker 1: generation of fierce independent artists. My confidences shook I don't
Speaker 1: know where. Early in her career, she pushed for freedom
Speaker 1: and creative control, especially for female artists, something she's finally
Speaker 1: seen become the norm in the industry. That progress inspired
Speaker 1: her new record, Soberish, which has her reuniting with the
Speaker 1: producer of her first two albums, Brad One. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: Who's Held Them talks to Liz Fair about how her
Speaker 1: approach to recording music isn't a technical one. She relies
Speaker 1: in the unique way she hears music and her background
Speaker 1: as a visual artist. She also talks about how her
Speaker 1: first ever creative aspiration was to write a classic Christmas Carol.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam with Liz Phair. So
Speaker 1: this is your first album since you wrote your terrific
Speaker 1: book Horror Stories. Thank you. Yes, it is my first
Speaker 1: album in ten years. Actually, did writing the book change
Speaker 1: how you write music? Did affect it at all? I
Speaker 1: don't know that it did I feel like writing music
Speaker 1: affected how I wrote the book. I think there's only
Speaker 1: so many words I care to fit into three minutes,
Speaker 1: and if anything, I might have left words out of
Speaker 1: the music to some extent. I mean you can see
Speaker 1: bursts of it at the end of songs. I'll sort
Speaker 1: of like start getting really already at the ends of songs.
Speaker 1: But if anything, it freed me up to think about
Speaker 1: sound design and production more. And I definitely did feel
Speaker 1: the arc of the album was important this time, almost
Speaker 1: in a way that I haven't felt since Guyville. That
Speaker 1: the story I was telling of sort of a breakup
Speaker 1: of one long relationship in the first half, and then
Speaker 1: the reemergence of my single self in the second half,
Speaker 1: sort of dating two different guys. That's how I see
Speaker 1: the album, and then like the third song from the
Speaker 1: end or fourth song from the end, I regret or
Speaker 1: a missing of that original relationship. So I don't know
Speaker 1: that it did. I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: curious about that, and I think it's more the other
Speaker 1: way around. I think the reason I broke core stories
Speaker 1: into short stories was because of the way that I
Speaker 1: write a song, the way that I could only I
Speaker 1: couldn't quite go for the full book arc. Each chapter
Speaker 1: feels to me like an expanded song with many more
Speaker 1: detours and many more tangents. Your album's full of great characters,
Speaker 1: AS's your book. One I do want to ask you
Speaker 1: about off the Top, and I think you released it
Speaker 1: last year, was Halu. That is a joyful song that
Speaker 1: sprang up spontaneously. It was actually an entirely different song
Speaker 1: when I brought it into the studio and at a
Speaker 1: very specific mandate for so Brush, I knew exactly where
Speaker 1: I wanted to end up on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: but I had no idea how to get there. And
Speaker 1: Brad Wood, who was the producer, who was the producer
Speaker 1: on my original three records, although White Chocolate Space Egg
Speaker 1: has Scotlet as well, he produced so Brush and so
Speaker 1: working together after not working together for gosh twenty years
Speaker 1: something like that was an interesting reacquaintance too, to kind
Speaker 1: of like get back into a rhythm with him. Halo
Speaker 1: was a very different song it was. It had entirely
Speaker 1: different lyrics, different subject matter, a lot of guitar strumming,
Speaker 1: which I wasn't satisfied with. I just thought like, this
Speaker 1: is clutter this doesn't feel like what our mandate for
Speaker 1: the album is. And I listened to the whole mix
Speaker 1: and I just said, take out my guitar entirely, just
Speaker 1: take it out. And then we were messing with like
Speaker 1: loops and samples and Brad he said, listen to this artifact.
Speaker 1: You know when you create a loop and you have
Speaker 1: to tighten it so that there's you don't catch the
Speaker 1: next phrase. There was a little tag, a little artifact
Speaker 1: left over from the next singing phrase that sounded like
Speaker 1: who who And it was just coming over and over
Speaker 1: again the chorus and we started laughing about it, and
Speaker 1: He's like, it sounds like Hay Lou, And he said,
Speaker 1: what if you wrote it about like Laurie Anderson looking
Speaker 1: at Lou read and we just died. We just started.
Speaker 1: We went from this tense studio moment where nothing was
Speaker 1: working and we were pulling different instruments out and putting
Speaker 1: them back in and the whole thing just wasn't satisfying
Speaker 1: to this breakthrough fit of giggles, spontaneous riffing, and we
Speaker 1: were just writing down lyrics as we went and it
Speaker 1: just flew out of us. This hilarious scenario of lou
Speaker 1: read up to his Shenanigans and Laurie Anderson loving but exasperated,
Speaker 1: whether you know, following her husband's whims as he went
Speaker 1: around making trouble. And we both had such admiration for
Speaker 1: those artists, and they were formative for me. They certainly
Speaker 1: influenced me greatly separately individually before they even got together,
Speaker 1: and then as a couple just felt like such a
Speaker 1: romantic story. I mean, like that's my kind of fairytale.
Speaker 1: That's a rock and roll fairytale, Like how can those
Speaker 1: two people have such a wonderful, loving relationship. They're so
Speaker 1: strong and independent, and it just has always sort of
Speaker 1: been out there on the horizon as a you know,
Speaker 1: a goal couple goals for me. So we really had
Speaker 1: a great time writing that. That was one of those
Speaker 1: songs that just spontaneously comes into being and it just
Speaker 1: feels I mean, I don't mean to say this about
Speaker 1: my own song. What it's kind of brilliant, you know,
Speaker 1: like you can't relate to wondering what the daily life
Speaker 1: of legends are. You know, you're book, you have a
Speaker 1: long chapter about working with an unnamed producer, but you
Speaker 1: said he was working in a way that you didn't
Speaker 1: like in the studio, So how do you like to
Speaker 1: work in the studio? I get in there, I don't
Speaker 1: like any equipment. Equipment and I do not belong together.
Speaker 1: I resent heavy black boxes of equipment and cables. I
Speaker 1: resent all of that. I feel uncomfortable and unsafe around equipment.
Speaker 1: But I am one hundred and fifty thousand percent focused
Speaker 1: on sound. I feel like I'm painting with sound. I
Speaker 1: see it spherically. I'm like, you know, there's something we
Speaker 1: don't We're kind of empty in the lower left quadrant
Speaker 1: and the plugins. When Brad will dial through the various
Speaker 1: sounds that we can get on it, we can just
Speaker 1: go for an hour. He's the same way. We'll try
Speaker 1: all these different settings till it's exactly right. And then
Speaker 1: there's a lot of this going on in the studio
Speaker 1: with Brad and me, where I say that one, that's
Speaker 1: the sound. I like that sound. He's like, great, okay,
Speaker 1: but I want to try a couple other ones. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: but did you write down what that song sound is like?
Speaker 1: Can we get back to that if you go further,
Speaker 1: can we come back to that one because that's the
Speaker 1: one I like and then he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just checking other things out. And then when I really
Speaker 1: like it, I'll kind of edge up on him and
Speaker 1: I'll just gently and slowly insert my arm over the
Speaker 1: key like the board and just be like no more,
Speaker 1: no more, don't go anywhere like this is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: stop flutsing like right here, I'm minutely aware of every change,
Speaker 1: like all those Tokyo fades of the vocals going from
Speaker 1: left to right. That was my new invention for Soberish
Speaker 1: and conflicting leads. That was another thing that I was
Speaker 1: trying on Sobrish. I wanted no traditional song structure. I
Speaker 1: wanted every single song to feel effortlessly like it passes
Speaker 1: you by without noticing that it has such an unusual arrangement.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to explain this to me because you
Speaker 1: cross through your hand. Well Spanish Doors. The album version
Speaker 1: has a lot of that work. I'm working with two
Speaker 1: or three different lead vocals that are singing different parts,
Speaker 1: They're singing different words, they're singing different melodies. And part
Speaker 1: of that was because the chorus lyric I'm slowly disappearing
Speaker 1: behind our Spanish doors. I wanted to create that moment
Speaker 1: when you suddenly realize everything in your life that you
Speaker 1: count on as being your identity, like your pile of
Speaker 1: what's good in your life is just decimated. I had
Speaker 1: a friend go through a terrible divorce, and I kind
Speaker 1: of wrote the song. It started before she went through divorce,
Speaker 1: but then I went quickly in and changed it to
Speaker 1: sort of write it from her point of view about
Speaker 1: that moment, that turbulent moment, and on the album version
Speaker 1: that don't want to think about it, don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it, when you just want to deny what's happened,
Speaker 1: there's a part of your brain that's just pounding, going
Speaker 1: like nope, nope, nope, nope. So that's going on in
Speaker 1: the chorus, and then there's this truthful statement, which is
Speaker 1: I'm slowly disappearing behind our Spanish doors. The ghost I
Speaker 1: see in the mirror doesn't smile anymore. When as someone
Speaker 1: you thought loved you doesn't love you anymore, you begin
Speaker 1: to fade for yourself for a while, you actually like
Speaker 1: lose part of your substantialness and you're weakened, and you
Speaker 1: see it in the mirror. You can see yourself fading.
Speaker 1: And there's another part of the song going, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's no way out of this place. I can't
Speaker 1: hide my lying face. There's no life here without you,
Speaker 1: just the echo of off you know. So that's going
Speaker 1: on in the chorus too, and we're playing with these elements,
Speaker 1: bring them in and out almost to say, like, what
Speaker 1: is a lead vocal really what you're doing with the
Speaker 1: songs creating an emotional moment, and for me, that song
Speaker 1: is about the turbulence of finding out new information that
Speaker 1: just shatters your world and the various parts of you
Speaker 1: that are competing to say what's happening to you? And
Speaker 1: yet at the same time it's this incredibly driving, great
Speaker 1: pop song. But it's very complicated under all that. That's
Speaker 1: the trick. That's what I wanted you to feel. I
Speaker 1: wanted this to flow right past your ears, you know,
Speaker 1: not feel how weird it was, and yet if you
Speaker 1: take it apart, it's extraordinarily weird. Do you want to
Speaker 1: know about the tokyo fades? I want to know tokyo fades? Now? Okay?
Speaker 1: So in like you and you hate it another game
Speaker 1: to play because I don't know about you, but I
Speaker 1: have many sort of voices in my head, different sides
Speaker 1: of me that talk to each other. Maybe I have
Speaker 1: a thicker sagittal section than most people, Like the left
Speaker 1: brain and the right brain are kind of independent operators.
Speaker 1: So on Soulsucker, the second verse, there's an entirely different
Speaker 1: second verse that's being ghost sung underneath the lead, and
Speaker 1: they switch size, they cross over each other, and it's
Speaker 1: sort of daring your mind to follow one or the other,
Speaker 1: and you can't follow both because they're going to split.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed lately this is interesting to me? In music,
Speaker 1: I like to layer tabs on my laptop so that
Speaker 1: more than one thing is going on. I think we
Speaker 1: all have been doing that for a while, so you're
Speaker 1: paying attention to multiple things. I tried to reflect that
Speaker 1: in the music of Soubrush. I tried to reflect how
Speaker 1: I think we're living now, which is with sort of
Speaker 1: sonic complexity, and yet it will make it feel like
Speaker 1: a pop song, like something that is recognizable and familiar,
Speaker 1: and yet I'm reflecting what we're immersed in sonically now.
Speaker 1: When you talk about sound and you use your hands too,
Speaker 1: you really think of it spatially. Is that because you're
Speaker 1: a visual artist as well? I think so, But I've
Speaker 1: always felt that way in the studio, like even on Guyville,
Speaker 1: I was doing that. It just immediately hit me when
Speaker 1: I first learned how to work in a recording studio
Speaker 1: that that's what we were doing. We were placing things
Speaker 1: on a canvas, but it was spherical. It was spatial.
Speaker 1: We were building an imaginary atmosphere, or an imaginary room,
Speaker 1: or an imaginary performance. And because I guess my ears
Speaker 1: are very sensitive, I wanted to reflect the way the
Speaker 1: world sounds to me, which is full. You know, the
Speaker 1: birds are going, this is going, that's going. I'm very
Speaker 1: distracted by all that. It's hard for me in restaurants
Speaker 1: because I'm hearing everybody's conversations, you know, like it's hard
Speaker 1: to just focus on the one thing I'm hearing. So
Speaker 1: I guess I'm more and more trying to reflect that.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a quick break. We're back
Speaker 1: with more from Liz Phair and Bruce DLin. Now, I
Speaker 1: just want to go back to you. Growing up, your
Speaker 1: mother was involved in art, your father was an infectious
Speaker 1: disease specialist, which means you've probably had some smart thoughts
Speaker 1: over the past year as we all lived through the pandemic.
Speaker 1: When did music start for you, though. I mean I
Speaker 1: took piano lessons when I was five. Then then I
Speaker 1: began to take guitar lessons in seventh and eighth grade,
Speaker 1: classical at first, then folk, and then as it became
Speaker 1: more apparent to my guitar teacher that I was not
Speaker 1: interested in learning notes, and you know, I'd had it
Speaker 1: with that kind of formalized musical. And she says she
Speaker 1: told my mother. She said she lived across the street
Speaker 1: from us in Winnetka, and she said, she keeps asking
Speaker 1: me to play it for her. I don't think she's
Speaker 1: reading the music. I think she's imitating me. And she
Speaker 1: realized I had a very good ear. And my guitar
Speaker 1: teacher said, as well, you know, I was tired of
Speaker 1: James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg, you know, not my choices.
Speaker 1: And she said, if you bring me, I'll cut you
Speaker 1: a deal. I won't tell your mother, and if you
Speaker 1: bring me in one originally written song a week, we
Speaker 1: will continue our guitar lessons. So that's really when it began,
Speaker 1: this sort of And I would do the same thing
Speaker 1: when my mother wanted me to practice. She'd be cooking
Speaker 1: in the kitchen and I didn't want to practice, so
Speaker 1: I'd make up my own songs on the piano, and
Speaker 1: as long as I was doing something on an instrument,
Speaker 1: all these people seem to be okay with it. So
Speaker 1: I would say from a very young age, and my
Speaker 1: parents are so they're not musical in terms of performing,
Speaker 1: but they enjoy music. It was. It filled our house.
Speaker 1: It's part of every meal. I don't think we sit
Speaker 1: down to a meal together without music in the background.
Speaker 1: And they took us to concerts, and you know, we
Speaker 1: went to symphony we went to musical theater productions. It
Speaker 1: was just always a big part of life. Was there
Speaker 1: a particular pop song or something you heard in the
Speaker 1: radio that at one point just said, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I want to do that. This is the truthful answer,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure it's what you're looking for, or
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not as impressed with it. But I also
Speaker 1: sang choir in our church. So I began to think
Speaker 1: that I wanted to write a classic Christmas carol, and
Speaker 1: I thought like that would be a really good thing
Speaker 1: to do. It was to write a new classic Christmas carol,
Speaker 1: like as as Stupid as Jingle Bells or as you
Speaker 1: know beautiful as a little town of Bethlehem. Just something
Speaker 1: I loved to put the lights up in my room.
Speaker 1: And our church had a big, huge pageant. It was
Speaker 1: very Anglican because we all dressed up, you want to think,
Speaker 1: like Henry the Eighth type banquet that we all went
Speaker 1: to and like in the light and we were in
Speaker 1: page and tights and we did tumbling and singing and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And we lived in England for a year,
Speaker 1: so like, it all felt very kind of But yes,
Speaker 1: I wanted to write a classic Christmas carol. So that's
Speaker 1: the first time I remember formally sitting down and say
Speaker 1: I'm going to do something professional. And I must have
Speaker 1: been a freshman in high school or an eighth grade
Speaker 1: something like that. Have you ever written a Christmas Carol?
Speaker 1: I wrote a funny dystopian one for Amazon Music like
Speaker 1: ten years ago, and I like it. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a off pieced Christmas classic. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I have. It's called Ho Ho Ho. I think
Speaker 1: I remember that. But I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: your guitar playing, because your guitar playing is so distinct.
Speaker 1: You don't play the way other people play. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: because you do you write in the guitar as well?
Speaker 1: I do, yeah, okay, because there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: chords and modulations you use that I don't think someone
Speaker 1: writing at a piano would use. So first of all,
Speaker 1: where did the rhythm come from? How did you develop
Speaker 1: that sense of playing? It's innate. I mean, it's hard
Speaker 1: to explain because it's not conscious. As much as I've
Speaker 1: just told you this whole long history of musical training,
Speaker 1: that wasn't what my focus was. I was a visual artist,
Speaker 1: and I knew that I wanted to be that, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a professional visual artist from a
Speaker 1: very young age, and I took that very seriously, and
Speaker 1: music was just more of what I don't know. I
Speaker 1: came from a family that you were supposed to do stuff.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to do sports, you're supposed to do arts,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to help in the community. So in my
Speaker 1: basket was music. But I see the guitar as an
Speaker 1: object that makes sound, all different kinds of sound, and
Speaker 1: all different positions make different sounds, and fingers make different sounds.
Speaker 1: And most people learn chords. I couldn't tell you what
Speaker 1: chords I was playing or what key I'm in to
Speaker 1: this day if my life depended on it. Really, I
Speaker 1: have no idea and I have no interest in it.
Speaker 1: So you couldn't tell me the chords in Halu And no, really,
Speaker 1: I have to relearn all my songs. I'm so prolific
Speaker 1: that I have to relearn every song I've ever written
Speaker 1: for tour. I don't know them any better than the
Speaker 1: band does. I have to go back and figure out
Speaker 1: what I was doing. Luckily, there's a muscle memory, and
Speaker 1: I know the kind of shapes I like to make
Speaker 1: on the fretboard, but it's all instinctive, and it's all
Speaker 1: about the ears, and it's the same in the recordings.
Speaker 1: To whatever sound I need, I'll figure out a way
Speaker 1: to get it if it's up if I've been playing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I sound like a crazy person, and maybe
Speaker 1: I am, but I just have had an always innate
Speaker 1: sense with creativity that I had the authority to do
Speaker 1: it my own way. I don't know if that's from
Speaker 1: my parents encouraging me or how I got that, but
Speaker 1: in all respects, I'm sort of an untrained expert. No,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. I'm just amazed that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess Paul McCartney still can't write music, and you know,
Speaker 1: lots of people still just have a feel for it.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know that was the way you wrote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's all about my ears. I hear very very
Speaker 1: very well, too well. How do you mean too well?
Speaker 1: If people are moving around the house, I hear it,
Speaker 1: you know, I just hear everything. I'm like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't block it out, can't block it out. It's distracting.
Speaker 1: Like when the wind blows. I can't handle windy days.
Speaker 1: I don't like it. It irritates me. I could be
Speaker 1: out in the wind, but if I'm in a house
Speaker 1: and the windows are rattling, I can't get any work
Speaker 1: done because I'm just like too much sensory information. To
Speaker 1: this day, you use a lot of unusual progressions, things
Speaker 1: more trained musicians would shy away from. And was that
Speaker 1: purely just you in the instrument, or were there songs
Speaker 1: you were hearing that did things like that that you
Speaker 1: wanted to emulate, or was it simply you with a guitar.
Speaker 1: I never consciously emulate anything. I think there are times
Speaker 1: when in the studio it's helpful to bring in to
Speaker 1: find a comm and language. I will emulate in the
Speaker 1: studio because it's the simplest way I've found to convey
Speaker 1: what I want. I'll say, you know how this song
Speaker 1: has this, but I'm actually going back after the song
Speaker 1: is written, trying to communicate with a producer by finding
Speaker 1: a song in the popular repertoire that has the thing
Speaker 1: I want that I can't put into words. So I'll
Speaker 1: bring in a song into the studio and say, like,
Speaker 1: let's do something like this, because it's a communication thing.
Speaker 1: But it never sit down to write and consciously imitate something.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure, in fact, I know that it's been
Speaker 1: you know, my love of music has come in, been digested.
Speaker 1: My subconscious is holding onto it and it spits it
Speaker 1: back out through my hands and through the instrument. So
Speaker 1: writing for you is always just you with a guitar, yes,
Speaker 1: figuring things out, yes, and then the lyrics come later
Speaker 1: or same time. Really, now, am I really that strange?
Speaker 1: This is the first time in an interview that I've
Speaker 1: sort of felt like I might be extremely out of
Speaker 1: the norm or out of the mainstream here, like I've
Speaker 1: never really I think a lot of musicians are that way,
Speaker 1: aren't they? Or No, No, I think you're maybe further
Speaker 1: along on that particular spectrum. But now I think that's
Speaker 1: how most musicians do it. It's much more by feel,
Speaker 1: but that you don't even to this day you have
Speaker 1: to go back and figure out your own songs by ears.
Speaker 1: Really interesting to me. Do you ever go back and say, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't figure it? Like? No, I've never not been
Speaker 1: able to crack a song. I'm terrified each time that
Speaker 1: I can't. Like when we did the box set, a
Speaker 1: reissue of my first record, Exile in Guyville and all
Speaker 1: the girly sound tapes, which were these cassette recordings I
Speaker 1: made before I was discovered, so to speak. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was just making wacky songs in the middle
Speaker 1: of night for my own pleasure and some of those
Speaker 1: you know, that was thirty years ago. How am I
Speaker 1: going to figure out what I was playing? Luckily I
Speaker 1: wasn't that great of a guitar player, so it turns
Speaker 1: out like not that many leaps and bounds were made.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that difficult. But half of what I know
Speaker 1: to do is actually in my hands. Like my hands
Speaker 1: have brains and they remember, and once I start doing something,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a dance. Oh, I remember this dance.
Speaker 1: It'll come back to me. You said once that the
Speaker 1: best songs are the ones you write when you think
Speaker 1: no one's going to listen. Is that still the case
Speaker 1: for you? Are you able to sort of block out
Speaker 1: the expectation that you know one day people are going
Speaker 1: to listen to this. I think that's why I wait
Speaker 1: so long in between records usually because I think the
Speaker 1: more honest, vulnerable songs come when I am just in
Speaker 1: a private space, a dream space, and that's how I
Speaker 1: grew up writing songs. I think that's why I brought
Speaker 1: in the idea that I was a visual artist intentionally,
Speaker 1: because that left music as a play space, an inventive
Speaker 1: place with no expectation of being heard. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what people liked about my music in the beginning,
Speaker 1: this kind of spontaneous. They may have taken it too
Speaker 1: literally and thought it was just confessional when it was
Speaker 1: actually a little more playful than that. But it's always
Speaker 1: been a free space for me, and I fight to
Speaker 1: try to keep that free space open. And the more
Speaker 1: people expect something from you, or the more professional it becomes,
Speaker 1: I think that dream space shrinks and you start to
Speaker 1: become what I would call clever, and there's nothing I
Speaker 1: hate more. I would prefer a half written, unfinished snippet
Speaker 1: of an honest song than a clever song. And I'm
Speaker 1: very capable of writing a clever, self conscious song, and
Speaker 1: they're dead. They're so dead they're offensive to me. Like
Speaker 1: when I write a clever song, I actually hate it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by clever? It means just too calculated.
Speaker 1: It rhymes fantastically, and you know, the devices, the literary
Speaker 1: devices are so swell, the turn of phrase and the
Speaker 1: you know, the isn't that funny because you wouldn't get
Speaker 1: from the verses that that's where I'm going in the chorus,
Speaker 1: Like this kind of showmanship. And I would always choose
Speaker 1: sometimes with grammar, like I know what correct grammar is,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I will sing it incorrectly because it just
Speaker 1: feels unpolished, feels more honest to me, and I'm attracted
Speaker 1: to my own vulnerability. You have your conscious mind, and
Speaker 1: you have your ambassador self that goes out in the
Speaker 1: world and puts on the best show. And I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in that. And that's what I would call a
Speaker 1: clever song, writing from that that front facing you that
Speaker 1: you know, we've all perfected to work in society if
Speaker 1: it comes from there. And some of them are just
Speaker 1: dazzlingly clever, like they really are clever, and I just
Speaker 1: hate them. I'm only interested in the stuff that I
Speaker 1: maybe don't even know about myself like that. There was
Speaker 1: a period not long ago that I was writing and
Speaker 1: I would I would weep every time I was writing
Speaker 1: a song because I didn't even know I felt that
Speaker 1: way about a person or about an experience. So it's
Speaker 1: like this discovery. It's like going into a dark cave
Speaker 1: and finding those crystals. There's somebody back there making sense
Speaker 1: of it all and boiling it down to poetry, and
Speaker 1: I'm on an expedition spelunking to find that person. There
Speaker 1: was a rhyme and I don't even remember the song
Speaker 1: when I was listening to your album, and it was
Speaker 1: something Diamonds rhymed with behind us. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: a rhymes when I say, but it worked perfectly in
Speaker 1: the song, and I thought to use a bad word.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, that's really clever. No, it's But aren't
Speaker 1: those the best those rhymes that are not rhymes or
Speaker 1: the unexpected rhymes? Like I guess they are clever, but
Speaker 1: they didn't come out cleverly. My professional, front facing self
Speaker 1: did not write that. You know, my open, exposed self,
Speaker 1: my deepest self. Don't you ever find it fascinating? And
Speaker 1: I think it's the closest I ever get to actually
Speaker 1: religious faith, that there is a deeper truth inside of
Speaker 1: you that only certain circumstances can unlock or can open up.
Speaker 1: And it actually makes sense, And there's an order in there,
Speaker 1: deep in there. Maybe it's an emotional order, but someone's
Speaker 1: making sense of it all and boiling it down to
Speaker 1: the most profound part of you. And whenever I can
Speaker 1: connect to that part, it just feels so damn good
Speaker 1: and so life affirming. I guess I have those, but
Speaker 1: I find those periods very almost hallucinatory. That's that trippy
Speaker 1: flow sensation. That's what I'm talking about. I live for that.
Speaker 1: You said you want to preserve that space. Now you have,
Speaker 1: I think because of the expectations after your first album,
Speaker 1: you have had more than your fair share of harsh criticism.
Speaker 1: How do you keep that space for yourself? Then a good,
Speaker 1: solid grounded private life. I keep old friends even when
Speaker 1: they drive me absolutely up a wall, and there's many
Speaker 1: times in my you know, but I keep the person
Speaker 1: that I've always been close to me. So in one
Speaker 1: space of my life, I'm not a rock star at all,
Speaker 1: and I like it that way. You know, I'm still
Speaker 1: the sort of smaller with my tall, bossy friends. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm still the one that's like, well, where are we going?
Speaker 1: Well what's happening? You know, Like I'm not the leader
Speaker 1: of my pack of friends by any stretch. Like I
Speaker 1: just thinking about this the other day. In almost all
Speaker 1: my friend circles, I'm not the leader, you know, But
Speaker 1: here I am the rock star in my career. But
Speaker 1: I'm the same person that I was when I was nine,
Speaker 1: So I have this other life. It hurts when you
Speaker 1: try to do something and everybody hates it, and they
Speaker 1: point out something that you didn't even see coming as
Speaker 1: some transgression that you've done that is offensive. That always
Speaker 1: feels like, you know, you've been slapped unexpectedly. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't rock me to my core because I think, via
Speaker 1: my parents and their group of friends and our extended
Speaker 1: family and the relationships that I've kept my whole life,
Speaker 1: that's not what's going to unman me. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just gonna suck for a really long while,
Speaker 1: but like there's still a me behind that me that
Speaker 1: is intact. After a quick break, we'll be back with
Speaker 1: more from Liz Phair. We're back with the rest of
Speaker 1: Bruce Headlam's conversation with Liz Phair. The other thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about was writing melodies. And you
Speaker 1: may say it just flow, it just comes out, but
Speaker 1: they're very angular and different. Do you spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time and you're on your melodies. Is that something
Speaker 1: you think about more consciously than the other things? Don't
Speaker 1: get mad, but I don't. They just come flying out
Speaker 1: of me. I'm like a songbird and I am very
Speaker 1: proud of my melodies, and nobody ever talks about them,
Speaker 1: so thank you for bringing it up. I feel that
Speaker 1: that is one of my chief most gifts. My melody
Speaker 1: ability is something I'm very proud of that doesn't get
Speaker 1: talked about a lot. Well, they're original, they don't sound
Speaker 1: like other people's. I'm very gratified to hear that. I
Speaker 1: love melodies. I love singing, and I started to think
Speaker 1: consciously about it when I went into television composition. I
Speaker 1: remember listening to an NPR program. I think it was
Speaker 1: coming out of USC Classical and they're talking about they're
Speaker 1: interviewing someone who composed for musicals, and he said, if
Speaker 1: you can't take away the words and still understand what
Speaker 1: the song is expressing, you haven't finished that piece, that
Speaker 1: that song is not complete, or that's the goal, that
Speaker 1: without words, it should still convey everything you want. And
Speaker 1: of course I hear that and I think, well, what
Speaker 1: if you did the opposite, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like then I start to want to get playful with it.
Speaker 1: But I've always remembered that as being incredibly important, that
Speaker 1: the melody should reflect the emotion with no other data
Speaker 1: at all. You should be able to understand the song
Speaker 1: simply from its fluidity. You wrote television music for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. You did the nine O two and
Speaker 1: O reboot. We did a bunch of shows. We did
Speaker 1: a sort of anyone that would take us. Was it fun? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was. I had that epiphany moment and my
Speaker 1: friend Doc, who was my scoring partner, there were three
Speaker 1: of us. We love to remember that moment where I
Speaker 1: was the picture was on the big screen and I
Speaker 1: was just playing piano to it, and something very simple,
Speaker 1: and I looked at him, I'm like, this is great,
Speaker 1: you know, like we were filling in the emotion for
Speaker 1: what was on camera while it was playing. And it
Speaker 1: was an entirely new sensation in a new way to
Speaker 1: flex creativity. And I never took it as far as
Speaker 1: I would have liked. I was hampered by my dislike
Speaker 1: of equipment, so I always had to work with someone.
Speaker 1: There's always someone in between me and composing. But it's
Speaker 1: the essence of what I do as a songwriter. I
Speaker 1: am filling in emotion to your blank spaces. You're living
Speaker 1: your life, and I'm providing you the emotional component to
Speaker 1: go along with whatever you're experiencing. And that's why you
Speaker 1: choose this song or that song. You need someone to
Speaker 1: score your life. And that's sort of what the sense
Speaker 1: is of what I aspire to do. What I hope
Speaker 1: my records will fulfill for people, that I will become
Speaker 1: part of the score of their experiences in their life.
Speaker 1: So to do it professionally directly was I never got
Speaker 1: tired of it. Really, you do it again, I would,
Speaker 1: and I had to do lots of the stupid stuff
Speaker 1: that I don't have to do as a rock star,
Speaker 1: like go to meetings and take notes and listen to
Speaker 1: bosses like I had to do. All that stuff never
Speaker 1: bothered me. I thought it was really fun, you know,
Speaker 1: occasionally when there would be power plays going on shocking
Speaker 1: in the TV world, like if someone falls off a
Speaker 1: project for various personal reasons, the power fighting between the
Speaker 1: people left behind, trying to step on each other to
Speaker 1: be the new authority, like I can take over the show,
Speaker 1: like don't hire an outside show runner. I'll show you
Speaker 1: that I can do it. And then they made us
Speaker 1: do all these changes because these people were fighting, I mean, scrappy,
Speaker 1: scrappy business. I didn't like that. Did it help you
Speaker 1: writing pop songs again? Did it give you just a
Speaker 1: new fresh way of thinking about it? No? I think
Speaker 1: it gave me an idea of an entirely different industry's
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses. I think I just came away from
Speaker 1: that experience thinking about power in studios and how many
Speaker 1: people work on a production and how things get done
Speaker 1: and why something's green lit and everyone's taking notes from
Speaker 1: other people, like just the arduousness of that process. I
Speaker 1: thought a lot about emotional turns. I watched directors come
Speaker 1: in or showrunners and say like, let's turn this scene
Speaker 1: on this emotion. I mean I actually I prefer to
Speaker 1: work with less people and just be more direct about creativity.
Speaker 1: It's hard to deal with all those agendas and you
Speaker 1: end up sometimes with the compromised product. So when you
Speaker 1: see a breakthrough thing like Fleabag or I May Destroy You,
Speaker 1: or something that's just pure, it's one vision, it's so
Speaker 1: attractive because it just feels like a bolt of lightning
Speaker 1: shot through the industry. And I have a much greater
Speaker 1: appreciation of that kind of art making now after having
Speaker 1: seen the studio process. Yeah, do you relate to those
Speaker 1: kind of productions, because really that's a lot of what
Speaker 1: you've done in your career. Yes, I feel like that's
Speaker 1: what I always want to be, no matter what's going
Speaker 1: on in the culture. I want to be a bolt
Speaker 1: of lightning that shoots right through it with like one vision.
Speaker 1: You think this new album does that, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean it does for what I wanted it to do,
Speaker 1: So we'll see you never do know. I suspect it
Speaker 1: will take a second for people to go, oh, she's
Speaker 1: new again, like there's a different sound again, which no
Speaker 1: one ever wants they just want Guyville. But I do
Speaker 1: think that there's a very strong through line in Soubrush.
Speaker 1: It is what it is, and it has been created
Speaker 1: to be exactly like it is, So sink or swim,
Speaker 1: we do not know. We shall see a couple of
Speaker 1: times you have done You've written in answer to other
Speaker 1: people's work. Famously, Guyville is your answer to Exile on
Speaker 1: Main Street. And you did a project it wasn't released,
Speaker 1: but it was an answer to the White Album. What
Speaker 1: does that give you as a writer? So much I
Speaker 1: feel almost like I have too much creativity and that
Speaker 1: grounding in something that I can play with, something solid
Speaker 1: and secure that is immutable, that then I can join with, oppose, inspect,
Speaker 1: rock back and forth, you know, like I can try.
Speaker 1: I have all these tools of ways to approach a
Speaker 1: thing that is immutable, and I feel more free and
Speaker 1: secure working my way around something that already exists than
Speaker 1: I do with just wide open nothingness. The same thing
Speaker 1: about like if someone gives you a blank page and
Speaker 1: they say write something or draw something, it's so much
Speaker 1: easier if they give you a triangle and say draw
Speaker 1: something for me, or write something about and one of
Speaker 1: the things that we can name him Ryan Adams. Before
Speaker 1: we got into the studio together, he was a beautiful
Speaker 1: sort of instigator of songwriting. He would say, write me
Speaker 1: a song about Elvis, and he knew and I knew
Speaker 1: that I was going to take that some totally unknown direction,
Speaker 1: but the fact that he gave me one simple mandate,
Speaker 1: not a lot of rules, not a lot of regulation,
Speaker 1: just one simple mandate Elvis. And I turned it around
Speaker 1: a number of ways. You know, it's like a dog.
Speaker 1: I just like play with it. And I googled Elvis
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I found this thing called Elvis legs.
Speaker 1: Elvis legs is a phenomenon that happens to rock climbers
Speaker 1: because they're so weakened that their legs just start doing
Speaker 1: this Elvis thing. And I wrote this beautiful song about
Speaker 1: The metaphor was You're on this cliff trying to ballet,
Speaker 1: you know, over and I will help you ballet like
Speaker 1: your Elvis legs good and reach the pegs on the
Speaker 1: overhang of your secrets. I'm clipping into the anchor pin
Speaker 1: and I will help you ballet. And so I turned
Speaker 1: it all around into this guy that has so many
Speaker 1: secrets that he's just like hanging onto the cliff edge,
Speaker 1: like not knowing how to get out because he's told
Speaker 1: so many lies, you know, and that I'm seeing him
Speaker 1: out there. I mean the second course, I mean, the
Speaker 1: second verse is just even more beautiful than that. And
Speaker 1: I'm flipping in and I'm going to help him get
Speaker 1: over to safety because he's just overdone it with the
Speaker 1: lies and the secrets and he doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: get off the cliff And how beautiful is that? Are
Speaker 1: you going to tell me the second verse? You and
Speaker 1: I we survive on the sheer wall of Hope Canyon
Speaker 1: while the screamers fall. I will hear your call and
Speaker 1: I will help you. Bilay. Oh, come on, you're not
Speaker 1: going to release Elvis legs. It hasn't been recorded yet,
Speaker 1: just in demo version. But like you and I, we
Speaker 1: survive on the sheer wall of Hope Canyon while the
Speaker 1: screamers fall. I will hear your call and I will
Speaker 1: help you, Bilay. Not beautiful, it's it's well the screamers fall.
Speaker 1: That's the line that it gets me. That's very good.
Speaker 1: What's it like to react to? First of all, you
Speaker 1: were reacting to Rolling Stone songs, and then you were
Speaker 1: reacting to Beatles songs. Did you learn more about how
Speaker 1: they put songs together in doing this or was it
Speaker 1: more just almost a thematic thing. Like I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: what the Rolling Stones meant and I'm answering them. I
Speaker 1: think I owe the Beatles because my parents were big
Speaker 1: fans when I was very little. I think I owe
Speaker 1: them more of my subconscious than I owe the Stones.
Speaker 1: I think Stones was something I arrived at later as
Speaker 1: a young adult, and the Beatles got in there at
Speaker 1: the very beginning, but it was more the earlier record,
Speaker 1: you know, like maybe Sergeant Peppers is like deep and
Speaker 1: my deepest subconscious. So I think I owe them my
Speaker 1: melodies and some of my progressions, and probably some of
Speaker 1: my lyrical flavors, maybe the playfulness and the imagery and
Speaker 1: the storytelling. I was overawed by some of the songs
Speaker 1: on the White Album and I thought like, there's no
Speaker 1: way I can do this song. But some of them
Speaker 1: I terrific responses for, like really just perfect and I'm
Speaker 1: sorry it never got it never got. Made very proud
Speaker 1: of some of that stuff. Yeah, do you know what
Speaker 1: the to me I'm thinking now, the Liz Fair song
Speaker 1: that they did was an album is a cry Baby Cry,
Speaker 1: crab baby cry, make your mom huh old enough to
Speaker 1: know better? Yeah, it does kind of doesn't sounds it
Speaker 1: sounds like it sounds like one of your melodies. And
Speaker 1: then the little descent after that. I think you have
Speaker 1: to do that in concert now. Oh okay. One of
Speaker 1: the things that really impressed me in your book, I
Speaker 1: think you said in the in the introduction is something
Speaker 1: that you were examining. It makes us stronger, basically to
Speaker 1: examine our weaknesses. And what I found so compelling in
Speaker 1: your book is it's not this catalog of evil or
Speaker 1: cataclysmic events. It's little decisions that just kind of accumulate
Speaker 1: over time. And you describe some very painful episodes in
Speaker 1: your life very early. There's the Redbird Hollow, which is
Speaker 1: just about you and your brother climbing a tree. It
Speaker 1: seems very innocent and then it kind but it almost
Speaker 1: sets the tone for the book. There's things getting a
Speaker 1: little bit worse and you don't know the decisions are
Speaker 1: going wrong, and then suddenly it goes terribly terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: Get that flavor in your song sometimes too, that your
Speaker 1: songs are instead of a whole story of a whole
Speaker 1: arc you're right here in the song making this mistake.
Speaker 1: And there's something kind of almost fatalistic about your songs
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, like your songs, they don't have the
Speaker 1: whole story, but they've got that one part of the story.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in endings. If I don't have
Speaker 1: a satisfying ending, I get mad at this in other
Speaker 1: people's art, and I get mad at in my own.
Speaker 1: I really want to arrive somewhere with something to take
Speaker 1: home with me, some kind of wisdom or something. So
Speaker 1: the arc of things, where they start, where they land,
Speaker 1: and is very important to me. I also, I think
Speaker 1: you can tell this from horror stories. My memory is
Speaker 1: filled with blank months where I don't remember a thing,
Speaker 1: but I hold on to vivid moments, almost like a capture.
Speaker 1: I can walk back into it, like inception, and move
Speaker 1: through the whole thing. It's as if my brain has decided,
Speaker 1: has elected to let go of most everything that doesn't
Speaker 1: spike very high or spike very low. Do you always
Speaker 1: have those moments in songs too? Like? Does every song
Speaker 1: have an emotional insight or something? I'm thinking of a
Speaker 1: song like a good Side, Yeah, which has a great lead.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give it away. It gets at
Speaker 1: the heart of something very quickly. Yeah, you can always
Speaker 1: identify those in songs. That's how I write. That is
Speaker 1: an emotional that is an epiphany moment, where as a
Speaker 1: mature person, I'm writing in a circumstance where I might
Speaker 1: have written fucking run, where I might be resentful. Now
Speaker 1: now I'm looking at the an abrupt ending of relationship
Speaker 1: and saying, it's not such a bad idea to end
Speaker 1: it here, you know, even though it wasn't my choice,
Speaker 1: I can understand that because if I continue to pursue
Speaker 1: this to try to get you back, or to get
Speaker 1: you to want me back, it's only you're gonna be
Speaker 1: left with a better impression of me. Like I don't
Speaker 1: know if this has legs, this thing between us, and
Speaker 1: so it's better just to you know, like that's only
Speaker 1: a mature person could leave it there and say, like
Speaker 1: I can live with that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like this is probably a better impression of me that
Speaker 1: you're ending with right now than it would be if
Speaker 1: we continued on down the line. Because I think I've
Speaker 1: been here before. I can see how this is going
Speaker 1: to roll out, and it's something I want to say
Speaker 1: to someone that I don't feel like I can call
Speaker 1: up and say. It's a way to communicate with someone
Speaker 1: that I cared about and hoped that I would have
Speaker 1: a longer relationship with and it didn't happen. And it's
Speaker 1: a way to sort of write that song that I
Speaker 1: would have written at twenty five, angry and resentful and
Speaker 1: like you used me or blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and just say like I might be getting out of this. Okay.
Speaker 1: It's kind of beautiful the arc of life. So what
Speaker 1: is what is next in the arc of life for you?
Speaker 1: Once the Pandemics verre even a tour with these songs?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well there's the Atlantis Garbage Tour, which I
Speaker 1: am on, which has been sold out for two years,
Speaker 1: so that hopefully will happen. I'm very much looking forward
Speaker 1: to that, although I am not looking forward to trying
Speaker 1: to move through this crazy country that can't get its
Speaker 1: shit together with COVID, So I'm of two minds. The
Speaker 1: tour itself is this ah thing I've been waiting to
Speaker 1: do for two years, thinking of me as the luckiest
Speaker 1: person on earth that I get to do this. And
Speaker 1: then there's the idea of how do you move in
Speaker 1: a bus through truck stops, through hotels, through you know,
Speaker 1: different state lines, different cities. If one of us gets sick,
Speaker 1: where do we leave them behind? I could get enraged
Speaker 1: on this podcast, thinking about can we just pick a
Speaker 1: strategy and all work together and deal with it? But no,
Speaker 1: everybody's doing their own thing. Everybody's approaching it their own way,
Speaker 1: and it's just gonna go on and on. It's like
Speaker 1: watching a train wreck and slow motion and I'm so
Speaker 1: angry and so frustrated and so disillusioned. That is spoken
Speaker 1: like the daughter of an infectious disease special. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: really mad about it. Maybe that's my opening act as
Speaker 1: the compliance officer getting up and the like. But they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to use their own microphone because no one's
Speaker 1: touching my mic. Listen. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: It's been a real treat. Thank you so much. What
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation, many many lovely roads we went down.
Speaker 1: Thanks for Liz Fair for sharing her creative vision for
Speaker 1: her latest album with us to hear Soberish and our
Speaker 1: favorite Liz Fair tracks headed Broken Record podcast dot. Are
Speaker 1: you sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where we can find
Speaker 1: all of our episodes. You can follow us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from
Speaker 1: Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez,
Speaker 1: with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: me a little Bit. Broken Record is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and if you like the show, please remember
Speaker 1: to share, rate, and review us on your podcast at
Speaker 1: the Musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Mishbert