There is really only one thing wrong with the song “Why Can’t I” from Liz Phair, and it is and is not exactly what you think.
In 2003, Phair made the full move to major label Capitol Records for her eponymous fourth album, from storied indie label Matador, for which she recorded Exile in Guyville (1993), Whip-Smart (1994), and whitechocolatespaceegg (1998). (The Matador releases were briefly a part of a Matador/Capitol distribution agreement as well.)
Prior to these albums, Phair released a series of lo-fi cassettes under the Girly-Sound umbrella. One thing was plainly apparent from all these recordings. Phair was an adamant independent, in style, in content, and in attitude. The titles of some of her songs alone could cause the clutchers to reach for their pearls.
All of this in mind, the audience writ large was suitably shocked by the appearance of “Why Can’t I,” but for completely different reasons. The song is a sweetly performed power pop track based on a very simple premise of overwhelming emotion in the face of attraction and infatuation. It sounded more akin to something sung by a lovelorn teenager. It sounded, let’s be blunt about it, a lot like Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.”
That’s not by accident. Both tracks were created by the production team known as The Matrix: Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards, and Scott Spock. No doubt the good folks over at Capitol saw the success the team had with Lavigne’s performance and wanted in on that action, and they achieved it. “Why Can’t I” did very well for Phair, and offered a side of her as a performer that few had known previously. (Capitol sure wasn’t going to get that from the album track “H.W.C.” which stood for “hot white cum.”)
What Capitol didn’t count on was the whiplash backlash, by which I mean a segment of the audience that knew nothing of Phair before this and were shocked and dismayed that she was not a teenage girl, and another segment that knew Phair as the unrepentant firebrand and were surprised by what they deemed to be a gold-plated act of selling out.
There’s nothing wrong with the song itself. It is a product of a production team and, therefore, has the unmistakable tool-and-die marks of a production-line song. The chorus in particular is constructed entirely too similar to “Uncomplicated,” but other pop star songs in later years would be just as guilty of following the pattern: think Katy Perry’s “Hot ‘n Cold” and Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.” Phair does a great job with the song, imbuing it with a sheen of sincerity. It isn’t as if she was burying the tune in a snarky wink and nod. Upon hearing it again recently, I can attest to its hooks being both of high quality and of annoying stubbornness.
Therefore, it wasn’t that Phair did it poorly. It was that Phair did it at all.
But time is a wonderful belt sander. It shaves off many rough edges, smooths out hard feelings, and those who groused about Phair singing that song (“She’s a mom, for God’s sake…and she’s going off like a sophomore!”) may now be moms – and sure, dads – themselves. Actually, that is the new charm that the song has accrued over time. Why can’t someone who is not a teenager still feel these sorts of feelings or express those types of emotions? Infatuation can be a powerful thing, and real love that much more. Why can’t someone experience that a few years after the supposed date where these states are considered tolerable? The song was not meant to be a campaign against ageism, but maybe could be indoctrinated as such…
Why can’t it?
I was working at an adult contemporary radio station when this song came out. Like many Liz Phair fans from the early albums, I was struck by how polished this song was. What made me laugh at the time, was that the program director didn’t preview the song before it aired. The lyric “We haven’t f*cked yet, but my head is spinning” was played a couple of times before I caught it and said, “Um, you probably need to find a different version — unless you want to pay FCC fines.”
Yeah, the radio edit was the way to go.