It’s probably fair to say Liz Phair has been the chameleon princess when it comes to providing the soundtrack for every element of our relationship with relationship management.
A decade earlier, Phair would have unwittingly created an album for those of us who just want the simple things in a relationship: a partner who’s smitten enough to write us regular letters and buy us sodas.
“Exile In Guyville” is, and will be more than an album for grrrrls, and those who are always brokenhearted; Phair describes how the landscape of society looked for women, and those who identified other than heterosexual white men in the early nineties.
The album, released 30 years ago today, will help lay the foundation to create a path for those of us brave enough to face vulnerability and understand that vulnerable isn’t always shiny. We tell our stories unabashedly and move forward; the prickly and painful parts are just part of the path to ‘Guyville.’
Inside The Inspiration Behind ‘Exile In Guyville’
Phair, who was in her mid-twenties at the time, did several interviews to promote ‘Guyville’ including one with MTV, where she would detail the inspiration behind the record.
“It’s hard to be a woman and be yourself,” Phair said at the time. “You’re often using whatever formula is out there, or trying to fit yourself to meet some expectation, and I really wanted to be myself.”
Retaining himself will indeed be the backbone of “Exile In Guyville”; Phair would go on to tell Tabatha Soren, “If the songs are really going to speak for what I don’t say in normal life, that’s what they’ve always done, kind of a place for my thoughts as I think.”
Phair thought a lot about “Exile On Main Street,” the gritty masterpiece from The Rolling Stones, released 11 years earlier. ‘Guyville’ is seen as the ‘female’ perspective of “Exile On Main Street.”
When asked about the connection in an interview with MTV a year later Phair said, “I took it like a thesis. So, I just thought the other day I’d go up to my parents’ attic and dig it all out [of] papers, lists and lists trying to make sense of it so I can more clearly explain this. What I did, I just took the ‘Exile On Main Street’ album like, lyrically, and just in terms of like, arrangement and sequence, and I answered it in my own way,” continued Phair. “Sometimes it’s a disagreement … I consider mixed lyrics to be my ‘love object.’ She is what the man says, and this is what I’m coming back with…”
‘Letters And Soda’ And All Of The Above: What About ‘Guyville’s Effect On Me?
Just as Phair describes herself in the first MTV clip above, I, dearest writer, am also a “late bloomer” to love. I want it right then and there, and everything related to it NOW.
Never mind learning about myself or taking the time to understand that understanding who I am as a person will impact one’s experience with it.
My first serious boyfriend was my first serious everything. I met him when I was much younger than Phair, and was in a relationship with him until I was around the time he recorded and released “Exile In Guyville.” As if I didn’t understand that love can be messy; I have absolutely no concept that people break up with people, and doing so is not a huge failure.
I found “Exile In Guyville” courtesy of a good friend of mine, and found it helpful in my post-relationship experience with dating. Phair not only showed me that it’s okay to have and feel different feelings about relationships, but it’s very necessary to make these ‘outcasts’ through ‘guyville,’ and they can help me get to know myself so I don’t have to metaphorically drive with a sense of amazement at the most important form of human interaction; thinking about my relationship with myself is just as important as thinking I want to meet a man who strives to have a bed frame.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
