From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V6 #128 Reply-To: support-system@smoe.org Sender: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk support-system-digest Friday, May 23 2003 Volume 06 : Number 128 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: support-system-digest V6 #127 ["Michael Kaufmann" ] star 98.7 in L.A. ["Joce Lyn" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 10:07:27 -0500 From: "Michael Kaufmann" Subject: Re: support-system-digest V6 #127 As usual Jase sums up my similarly mixed view on new Liz. I don't go back and forth as much though I think. I'm looking forward to a more quickly delivered next cd that leans less to the pop charts, but realize that might not be in our future. In any case, I'm still puzzling over the shots taken at My Mother is Mine and to a lesser extent My Favorite Underwear. The review (quoted below) calls it "confused and condescending." I don't seem much of either, nor is it "sweet" as another knocker characterized it. Yes it presents the cute image of her kid showing off his trucks, but that cuteness is offset with the pain of who he's showing his truck "from his Dad" off to, and acknowledging the whole business might be somehow damaging to him and that she bears some part in that (("I've done the damage, the damage is done; I pray to god that I'm the damaged one"). Not sure what's cute or condescending about that. I guess it can't be called entirely insightful, but I'm not sure she's trying to be there. It's just a heartfelt apology to and hope that her boy will understand ("I hope you can . . . some day. I hope you can"). As for My Favorite Underwear, I agree it is a weird song, and an odd way to characterize a relationship (clue to reviewer it's not an ode to her underwear). I see it as a take on Crow's "My Favorite Mistake." Instead of happy regret over a relationship she wouldn't take back, we have the speaker constantly renewing a physical relationship with some guy who makes her feel better, even if apparently it's not enough to maintain anything more than that. I don't deny a certain cringiness to the notion of taking on and putting off people like underwear (not to mention leaving them lying around on the floor or hanging on the bathroom door), but we can't then turn around and say she doesn't manage to sneak some surprises in to her lyrics. I do agree that HWC begs comparisons with Flower and doesn't quite match up (though I don't see Flower at the top of my liz list anyway), but still find it a funny presentation in the folkish, aimee mannish arrangement. I know it's hard to get past the polished surface, which if it gets anymoreso might be impenetrable, but she really is still there. Mike >>> owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org 05/22/03 00:17 AM >>> All of that is a distant memory on her long-delayed eponymous fourth album, where she makes a long-delayed stab at superstardom, glamming herself up like a Maxim MILF of the Month and inexplicably pitching herself somewhere between Sheryl Crow and Avril Lavigne, on one side working with Michael Penn and adult alternative singer/songwriter Pete Yorn and on the other hooking up with 2003's hitmakers du jour the Matrix (not wanting to lose her aging core audience, [...] parallels to her circulated life story - there's no insight here, particularly when compared to, yes, her earlier work. It's not just that "The Divorce Song" details a messy breakup better than either of the divorce songs here (although that's an important, telling truth), it's that the parenting song is confused and condescending, it's that the endless songs about sleeping with twenty-something guys are littered with ridiculous lyrics ("I'm starting to think young guys rule," "I want to play Xbox on your floor"), and it's that she can't manage to write either a funny or sexy ode to her underwear on "Favorite." It's also that toward the end of this deliberate bid for the mainstream, she tosses in the embarrassingly "naughty" "HWC," where she extols the virtues of semen in the hair and on the skin ("Without you I'm just another Dorian Grey"); - ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 08:23:06 -0700 From: "Joce Lyn" Subject: star 98.7 in L.A. A Liz song played on Star 98.7 (young pop music) on the top five last night around 7:15 or so. I was excited just to hear "Why Can't I?" then of course stunned when I heard the DJ announced it was the number one most requested song of the night. Whoa. - -Jocelyn "Rock Chick" - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V6 #128 ************************************