They have a feature celebrating Pitchfork's 15 years wherein certain artists talk about music that has influenced and affected them. Liz Phair's Whip-Smart apparently made an impact on Amy Klein's musical life.
Yup, I dunno who she is either.
1996: Liz Phair: Whip-Smart
I was a very precocious 11 year old growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey. I wanted to know everything. I would kidnap CDs from my older sister's room, and Whip-Smart was one that stayed in my room for many months. I really liked the explicit nature of the lyrics. I wasn't particularly interested in dating and guys at age 11, but I was really interested in Liz Phair's jaded cynicism, toughness, confidence, and how it sounded like she'd experienced everything. Basically, I wanted to be Liz Phair.
After listening to it for a few months, I remember painting my nails with my friends while hopped up on the album. We were totally giddy, trying to be these teenagers that we weren't yet, and we dropped the nail polish on the floor. It was red, and there was shattered glass everywhere, and the whole room looked like a crime scene. At that moment, I had this epiphany that maybe Liz Phair was actually sad at times. I started to understand that, behind the toughness, there was a lot that you didn't see.
When I told my sister I really liked Whip-Smart, she told me that Exile in Guyville was a more interesting album. And listening to those albums side-by-side was very important for me because it was the first time I was trying to figure out what made one album more interesting than another. It wasn't enough for an album to have catchy songs that you wanted to sing along to; maybe there was some kind of depth to one album that was missing from the other one.
I stopped following Liz Phair's music, and I think everyone was confused when she reinvented herself as a pop star. I don't blame anyone who's trying to make money, though. But she reviewed Keith Richards' new book for The New York Times recently and she did a really good critical reading of it, which made me think, "She's still got it. She knows exactly what she's doing."
http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8027-96-01-06-11-part-two/2/
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