Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.
Here’s “Divorce Song” by Liz Phair:
Liz Phair’s debut album, Exile in Guyville, was released twenty years ago this week. There’s a more or less interesting account of its making featuring contributions from Liz Phair, Brad Wood and others in Spin. Click here to read it. Part of what makes Exile in Guyville so great is the spareness of the sound, which this song demonstrates well. Of course there’s also the songwriting, and particular the directness and sharpness of the lyrics: pretty much every song on the album is in one way or another a challenge, and “Divorce Song” presents a particularly poignant and fragile challenge (can a challenge be fragile? I think it can).
