My Top 1000 Songs #558: 20 Questions
Singer-songwriter Amy Rigby's 1996 solo debut Diary of a Mod Housewife was quietly groundbreaking, a mature work from a divorced mom full of brutal break-up songs and proclamations of independence, Rigby refining some of her work from prior indie Americana & folk-based acts and peppering it with varied rock, pop, and country inclinations. She could also be disarmingly funny, as on the arch "20 Questions," a "Subterranean Homesick Blues"-like barroom romp in which the wronged woman interrogates her no-good partner after his drunken night on the town. "Why you coming in at 3 a.m., looking several shades of green? Smelling like a perfume insert from a woman's magazine?" she asks, her tale given a little more two-sided nuance when the titular questions devolve into some aggravating insecurity. "Do you still love me? Did you ever love me? Do you still find me attractive? What time do you have to get up in the morning? Oh, and by the way, when are you gonna get a real job?"
The performance is ably abetted, unexpectedly, by former Cars guitarist Elliot Easton on guitars/bass and production, giving her wounded but assertive delivery some added heft.
Solo acoustic:Later, with some beefy bass from partner Wreckless Eric:
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