Liz Phair Liz Phair (Capitol)
Phair told Entertainment Weekly that she wasn’t happy with the reception Capitol execs gave the record’s first draft, which was produced by Mr. Aimee Mann, Michael Penn. “[They] were like, ‘It will be a nice record. It will be critically liked and it will be fine,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘It’s way too much work to go out and promote a record to hear only that. I’m not leaving the box until you’re more excited than that.’” Summing up her motivations, Phair recounted a conversation with collaborator Pete Yorn: “He was like, ‘Well, isn’t it just about the music?’ I looked at him and I’m like, ‘Not for me anymore. It’s not.’”
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Albini brought his considerable talent for invective to bear on 1993’s “alternative” hits after Reader columnist Bill Wyman (now the arts editor at National Public Radio) defended Phair and company against what he perceived as unfair attacks by the antipop “underground.” “Few would question the artistic integrity of these acts,” Wyman posited, “yet each artist had to grapple with what’s supposed to be a dichotomy between being popular and being alternative.” Even as the popularity of acts like Phair proved, according to Wyman, that “the fine line between the two was blurring,” the underground “tried not only to keep them clear, but to make a big deal out of which side of the line you were on.”
At the same time, the music industry is suffering from an unprecedented slump in sales. According to Billboard, U.S. album sales fell 10 percent in 2002, and as of March of this year were down another 10 percent. Basically, there is less and less music on the radio and it sounds more and more the same. Apart from this, the current downward trend in sales has put added pressure on companies to look at other ways to deliver profits to shareholders: An analyst quoted by Billboard two months ago predicted the potential for “one more consolidation on a global basis” among major record labels.
