My Top 1000 Songs #932: Polyester Bride

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

It would be easy to keep picking more stand-outs from Liz Phair's universally revered 1993 debut Exile In Guyville. I could do the same from 1994's also excellent (if less appreciated) Whip-Smart. But I think her third album, 1998's Whitechocolatespaceegg, gets an unfairly bad rap. Sure, she made some moves in a more commercial direction, adding some studio polish. And this is most notable in the single "Polyester Bride," which sports a lot more muscle than the first two albums, and has the vibe of "let's add a single to an otherwise hard-to-market LP"--but it's a great song, with that classic Phair conversational tone, maybe a little more self-consciously trying-to-write-a-pop-hit but still hardly a sell-out. (Maybe it sounds radio-friendly after the first records, but it's a far cry from the expressly-made-for-mainstream-teen-appeal of 2003's somewhat reviled self-titled reboot--an album, let me just say, that's also better than legend has it.)

While those first two albums are era-defining records for me, as much a part of my 90s existence as Pavement and Yo La Tengo, "Polyester Bride" was an opportunity to hear Liz as simply a distinctive artist with some great songs, rather than as a symbol for something revolutionary. (Though, like a lot of the songs on her first 3 albums, it originated on her early Girly-Sound home recordings, as much a part of pre-fame Phair arcana as anything on Exile, but given a shiny reworking for Whitechocolate.)

The video (not great audio):

Live 2012:

Original Girly-Sound home recording: