Nobody Sparkles Like You

Liz Phair @ Bowery Ballroom 12/13/2010

Supernova / 6’1″ / Help Me Mary / Divorce Song / May Queen / Never Said / Nashville / And He Slayed Her / Polyester Bride / Perfect World / Mesmerizing / Oh Bangladesh / Extraordinary / Flower / Stratford-On-Guy / Fuck and Run // Don’t Hold Your Breath aka If I Ever Pay You Back / Soap Star Joe / Hot White Cum / Johnny Feelgood

This was my first Liz Phair show, after something like sixteen years of being a fan. The songs from her first two albums (plus about half of her third) are seared into my memory, they’re a part of me. If I hear them, I sing along. They’re some of my favorite songs to sing, actually. I certainly wasn’t alone in singing along at this gig. This wasn’t some Dashboard Confessional type of thing, just a lot of fans respectfully singing along at a low volume as not to overwhelm Liz or disturb our neighbors. Pretty much everyone who came out for this show was obviously a big fan, and showed her a lot of love through the whole show. This was the kind of crowd that gave songs from Funstyle a round of applause, full of the type of people who would request an impromptu performance of “Hot White Cum.” Liz was clearly heartened by the positive response. She was a little stiff at first, but by the time she got into “Divorce Song,” she was feeding off the energy and giving it back. It was a really nice show.

The highlights for me were fairly deep cuts. “Perfect World,” the song that always breaks my heart into a billion pieces. “Help Me Mary,” maybe not as obscure, but a song with one of my favorite simple melodies. Most especially “Nashville,” possibly my favorite track in her catalog. Here’s what I wrote about “Nashville” back in 2007. It’s one of my favorite things that I have written on this site.

Liz Phair “Nashville”

Maybe I’ve been reading the wrong writers or speaking to the wrong people since the early 90s, but it seems that almost no one ever mentions that the guitar parts on Liz Phair’s first two albums are more often than not as poetic as her words. The tone in “Nashville” is drowsy and nearly serene, but its churning rhythm is nervous and unsteady in a way particular to feeling terrified about losing something in which you’ve invested too much. It’s an interesting subtext for a song that depicts a relationship in its most uneventful yet most emotionally loaded moments, and proclaims “I won’t decorate my love” at the end like a mantra, a promise, and a manifesto.

Of course, when she sings those words, the arrangement contradicts the notion with some sentimental adornment in the form of a few faded saxophone notes and some distant twinkling sounds, presumably an echo of the sweetest thing that Phair sings in this, or possibly any other, song: “They don’t know what they like so much about it / they just go for any shiny old bauble / and nobody sparkles like you.” It’s a genuinely beautiful thing to say, but it’s grounded in an elitism that I find to be human and true, and it speaks to the reality that who you fall in love with is a matter of taste, and some people have better taste than others. Ultimately, this is a song about pride, and the way that it makes love both more difficult in that it keeps you from opening up to just anyone, and more rewarding when you find someone with whom you can feel safe enough to drop your defenses.

Buy it from Amazon. Originally posted 2/6/2007.