by Liz Phair
Standing just a little bit away, Matt reminds me that there are two bars before the first verse, so I’ll know when to start singing. The prerecorded holiday tune sounds roughly the same until you get to the chorus, so it’s hard to tell what section of the song you’re in without a cue. I have an earpiece, and I nod as the audio engineer inside the building sets the volume level and adjusts the equalizer. He rewinds the track, and everybody steps away while we wait. Now it’s just me alone here in the barrel, if you don’t count the five million viewers watching the live broadcast at home. I try not to think about it. In the space of thirty seconds, I’ve gone from an atmosphere of frenetic team activity, lasting hours, to total isolation and absolute stillness out here on the plaza. I listen to the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears, feel my breath draw hot and shallow in my sore throat. I’m staring straight into the camera lens, blinded by two huge beauty lights positioned on either side of the crouching cameraman. Everybody is in set position. I feel like one of those ski racers waiting at the top of the mountain for the starting signal.
Through my earpiece, I can hear the broadcast. It’s silent during commercial breaks, with the occasional burst of chatter from the station’s behind-the-scenes technical communications. Then the anchors chime in, doing their shtick as they banter back and forth. I nod and smile and say something innocuous like “I’ll be singing ‘Winter Wonderland’ ” or “I’m excited to be here.” The voices respond with encouragement—“Can’t wait to hear it!” or “From the artist who sings the song ‘Why Can’t I?’ Liz Phair!” I don’t hear anything for several seconds. Finally the track fades up, and I wait through the requisite two-bar intro, as instructed, coming in on the first line. “Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane snow is glistening…” It sounds pretty good. My voice is holding its pitch. When you first get sick, you can usually power through a few nights before the virus affects your vocal cords. It’s the tail end of an illness that really kills you. Several days of dehydrating cold medicine takes a toll. But you can sing through delirium, fever, nausea. Once the inflammation travels down into your chest, though, and you start coughing, you’re totally screwed. I continue on. “A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight, walking in a winter wonderland.” Something sounds off about the mix. The chords don’t sound right in the turnaround before the second verse, but I plunge ahead, assuming it’s an equalizing issue in the studio’s audio booth. “Gone away is the bluebird, here to stay is the new bird. He sings a love song as we go along…” I sing the last line of the second verse over a dissonant chord, aghast at the musical clash: “walking in a winter wonderland.”
Oh fuck. I can hear that I’m in the wrong section of the song. That was supposed to be the first line of the chorus. The engineer in the control booth must have faded in the track late, and I am off by a whole two measures. I know this only in hindsight. At present, I simply have no idea where I am. My brain is too addled to do the math. I’m hopelessly lost on live television, fumbling like an idiot in front of millions of people. There’s no live band to switch it up on the fly and follow my lead. This is a prerecorded instrumental arrangement, and it’s marching relentlessly on without me. Maybe if I weren’t so feverish, or if I were accustomed to working this way, or if I didn’t keep glimpsing my poodle curls in the reflection of the camera lens, I could have salvaged the performance. But I’m malfunctioning like a faulty robot. My circuit board is fried. I sing the wrong line over each part of the chorus, until it sounds so bad that even I have to stop and trail off midsentence.
I stare straight ahead, listening intently, trying to find any clue as to what part of the song I’m in. I’m afraid to guess and end up clashing with the music again. Almost fifteen seconds of silence pass before I pick back up on the chorus. Finally, I’m in sync with the arrangement again, but I’m so flustered from fucking up massively on live TV that when I reach the bridge, I can’t remember any of the words. My mind draws a total blank. I start mumbling gibberish, singing parts of other verses, humiliating myself like I do when I go to a friend’s house for Shabbat and they start reciting the wine prayer. When it is time for an actual verse to begin, I make a hash of that, too. I’m just repeating myself. It’s a disaster. I’m blushing crimson, and I look utterly miserable on camera. I am miserable, frankly. It’s a miserable rendition of a holiday classic.
The song finally ends, but the cacophony is still ringing in my ears. I’m pretty sure all New York City is laughing at me. The anchors grab the reins once more, like nothing happened, but everyone out here on the plaza feels incredibly sorry for me. They all tell me that it wasn’t that bad, that the people watching are hardly going to notice that I messed up the words. I know they’re lying through their teeth. There’s no point in self-recriminations now. Everybody in the United States knows the words to this song.
Bumbling one’s way through a high-profile appearance is not the kind of thing you can get away with easily. Just ask Ashlee Simpson. Everybody messes up from time to time, but it’s a major drag when it happens to be during a beloved annual tradition.
The next morning, Howard Stern is making fun of me on his radio show for my deer-in-the-headlights car crash of a performance. It’s all over the Internet for a while, too, with people speculating that I had a stroke, or that I’m on drugs, or that my brain lost oxygen due to the tightness of my hairdo. The indie press has been waiting for me to fail, and though this is disappointingly low-hanging fruit for them, they weigh in with snarky wisecracks until the dead horse is thoroughly beaten and no one has the heart to take one more kick.
I’m sick as a dog on the fourth day of this illness, but I still have to get up and make the rounds for the holiday season. When you have a hit song on the radio, it means they boosted you specifically throughout the year, and if you want to sell more records, you have to show up for all their Christmas extravaganzas to pay back that support. Their loyal fans expect to hear the songs they associate with the station, and “Why Can’t I?” got a lot of airplay in a number of markets.
December is a wild time to be popular. You end up running into the same artists over and over as they, too, perform for the stations that made them famous. I remember bumping into the Black Eyed Peas, Fall Out Boy, and Hootie & the Blowfish repeatedly that December. The holiday variety shows only want two songs from each artist anyway, so being sick hasn’t been a serious problem for me yet. But by the time we roll into Chicago after playing “Winter Wonderland” and “Why Can’t I?” for all the East Coast stations, I have full-blown laryngitis.
I wake up on the morning of Q101’s Christmas show and can’t make a sound. Not a squeak. Not a growl. I have to write everything down on a piece of paper to communicate. I can’t even call my manager to let him know we’re in trouble, because he wouldn’t hear me over the phone. I open my mouth, take in a lungful of air, and all that comes out when I speak is a hiss. Zero tone. Zero pitch. I doubt you’ve ever had laryngitis this bad in your life, because, when you got sick, you probably weren’t also singing two shows a day for weeks at a time.
In my business, you don’t cancel gigs unless you are a multimillionaire or a drug addict and pretty much already on a downward spiral. If you’re anywhere between those two extremes and have a hit song to play, they will dig up your grave, roll your dead body onstage in a wheelbarrow, and make your jaw move with their hands if they have to. That’s not much of an exaggeration. It’s 2003, and the music industry is practically a black-market economy, with payola flowing freely and a prevailing mob mentality on the executive floors. Too many backroom deals are struck, too much money is spent, too much manpower is expended trying to cover vast amounts of territory. Radio programmers leverage other assets to get you into the optimal position to launch you even higher in the stratosphere so the labels can finally start raking in the fun money, and they are not going to let you walk away.
Up until now I could disguise my vocal issues by ha
ving the band double my parts and using pitch-correcting software at the soundboard, but this morning is different. I don’t see how I can possibly play the show when there’s just no sound at all coming out of my mouth. Making some kind of noise is a crucial aspect of singing. What am I supposed to do when I get onstage? Clog around like a Riverdancer? (Again: see Ashlee Simpson.)
We explore the idea of lip-synching, but the whole band is here, and we don’t have the premade tracks to do it right. For all of us to fake it, the bass, the drums, the other two guitar players, and I would have to jump around pretending to play our instruments, and that’s pretty risky. You only perform like that on video shoots. Bands that lip-synch live use at least eight, and sometimes up to twelve backing tracks, blended together so they feel slightly out of alignment and thereby authentic. You don’t just play the fully produced radio version of the song on a mono mix and bounce around with your amps unplugged, unless you want to wake up to a career-ending press volley the next morning. We’re in a real predicament.
When I get to the venue and show my manager how bad it is, he lies right to my face. “It’s not that bad, Liz. Come on.”
“Russ!” I scribble the words on a piece of paper and push it across the table at him. “There’s no way I can sing! I can’t produce a single word.” I assume he will agree with me, and I’m even throwing up my hands, silently laughing because it’s kind of obvious what the move here is. I need to go home and go to bed. I have a good work ethic. It would be one of the first times in my career that I’ve ever canceled anything. It’s clear as a bell that I cannot perform my duty. Surely he can see that.
Boy, am I wrong. My manager tells me that, of all the stations in the nation, adult contemporary in my hometown of Chicago is the linchpin, and we can’t afford to blow it off.
I write, “You think I’m blowing it off?” underlining my words multiple times, rather severely, and passing the note back to Russ. I wish I had written, “Buddy, you can put a microphone in my face, you can jam the head down my throat all the way back to my tonsils, but you’re not going to hear anything. I should mention that a standard live mic is almost the exact size and shape of an erect dick, and the front-of-house guy is always telling the singer to “put your mouth right on it.” And while we’re on the subject, please note that an electric guitar is more or less shaped like a stylized and supersized cock and balls. I’ve given this career all I’ve got, I think, and I’m sorry it’s not enough.
But the show must go on. They push me out on the stage, and with the divine assistance of the cherubic Jason Mraz, I mouth my way through the worst rendition of “Winter Wonderland” ever performed on any stage in the world. A bullfrog has more melody. A weasel has better tone. And you know what? Nobody notices. It goes off like clockwork, and no one’s the wiser. I’m stunned, and a little depressed, to be honest. Do I even need to be here?
Live radio events attract a very general type of music fan—somebody who doesn’t have a lot of choices, or maybe a lot of sophistication. They are loyal to a specific station, and that’s about it. They’re often under the age of sixteen and chaperoned by an older sibling or parent. The people behind the scenes don’t mind fooling them, and I hate that they are so gullible and taken advantage of. I’m sick of the pop world and all its trappings. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss rock-and-roll clubs.
I fought my whole life to have a voice, both literally and figuratively. If I stay in this radio realm, I’m not sure I need one. I feel like a prop, a cardboard cutout, a clone, and it is a terrible feeling. I grew up listening to the radio. I’m not a music snob. I never equated broad taste with bad taste. But this past week has left an unpleasant funk on my palate.
I leave the show in a good mood, which my manager misinterprets.
“See?” He slaps me on the back proudly. “I knew you could do it.”
“Va baiser un canard, Russ,” I quack under my breath. And that’s the last time I ever did do it.
I’m doing it again. I hate myself in a way, but I’m also excited. I took extra time this morning getting dressed, applying my makeup. I tried on several outfits, settling on a feminine bias-cut slip dress and sweater. Am I going to a fantastic party? An important meeting? Is this a radio station visit? Nope, I’m going grocery shopping. I’m going to Trader Joe’s.
I know perfectly well that the staff at Trader Joe’s is instructed to make friendly banter with the customers. I know that the atmosphere in the store is informal and convivial by design. I know that what I am doing is utterly pathetic and a little unhealthy, but I am currently in so much psychic pain, that going to the grocery store and flirting with a guy who looks like my ex is better than sitting at home crying in my pajamas. This is like training wheels, I tell myself. This is just you practicing getting out of the house and doing things normal people do again.
Ever since my boyfriend Rory and I broke up, I’ve lost all confidence in myself. His betrayal was so devastating that I don’t want to leave the house. I feel transparent. I’m so self-conscious that I think everyone who looks at me can see exactly what he did, and I imagine that I must look pitiable to them. Every secret fear I have about myself feels like it’s written on a big sign over my head:
I WASN’T PRETTY ENOUGH TO DATE A GUY LIKE THAT.
I’M THE ONLY ONE LEFT WHO IS SINGLE.
IF I WERE SUCCESSFUL, I WOULDN’T BE DOING MY OWN SHOPPING.
THINGS THAT ARE REALLY HARD FOR ME SEEM TO BE EASY FOR OTHER PEOPLE. I WILL NEVER FIT IN ANYWHERE.
IT’S TOO LATE TO FIND LOVE.
I’m lonely every day, and I don’t want to be. I don’t want his actions to break me. I want to get out and engage with the world again, but I’m too shaken up to risk it. If I were to run into friends or acquaintances that I haven’t seen in a while, I would feel obligated to lie about what’s going on in my life, and I don’t lie very well. There’s no way I could put on a brave face and admit what happened. I would burst into tears on the spot. I’m that emotionally fragile right now.
My close friends call to check in. They try to get me to join them for dinner parties, but that inevitably means hanging out with couples, and my singleness feels like a scarlet letter emblazoned across my chest. Rationally, I know that everyone is ultimately self-centered, and they couldn’t care less what’s going on in my love life. A few women I know might even take some satisfaction in seeing that, indeed, you can’t have it all. You don’t get to be a rock star and have people clap for you, have magazines photograph you, go to awards shows, and still have a happy homelife, do you? You don’t get to sing about sex and call men out and still be part of a happy, committed relationship. I wonder sometimes if my own mother agrees on that point. You make choices, and those choices have consequences. Maybe love is not something that is destined to come my way, after the things I’ve done and the person I’ve been in the world.
If you think this sounds self-pitying, you’re right. This latest heartbreak solidified a fear of mine: I was too far outside of society to ever crawl back in again. I would have to live out the rest of my life on the fringes, always being the odd one out. I was too straight to be deeply enmeshed with the artists’ communities I knew, and too bent to settle down with the mainstream suburban crowd I’d grown up with. And now I was alone. Again.
I was a sham, a fraud. The world saw me as a renegade, a fearless maverick, and here I was nervous about making the one big jaunt of my day to the grocery store to flirt with a checkout clerk. This Trader Joe’s guy was paid to be friendly. It wasn’t even a challenge. I didn’t care. I needed something to make the pain disappear for half an hour, and this worked. The pot didn’t work, the booze didn’t work, but this did. I would come home from Trader Joe’s on the days I’d seen him feeling happy and attractive, like I had something to look forward to in life. Where was the harm in it? In the grand scheme of things it seemed like an innocent if embarrassing indul
gence. What could go wrong?
When you exit a long-term relationship suddenly, you go a little crazy. The ripping away of someone you love leaves your heart hungry and your arms empty, and you’re at a loss as to which way to turn. The only thing you know for sure is that you can’t go back the way you came. You must go forward, or sideways, or up, or down; anywhere except home again, because that’s not your home anymore. You are temporarily homeless.
Losing love can turn you into a ghost in your own life. You go to all the same places, do the same things, but you’re not really there. You’re surrounded by friends and family, people with whom you intimately belong, but because your heart is broken, you listen to their laughter and conversation as if from a great distance. You’re physically present, but emotionally, you’re in some parallel dimension from which you cannot escape, no matter how hard you try. Time will refasten what’s come unmoored inside you. In the meantime, you exist in the netherworld, with your face pressed up to the glass—wishing you could be like those happy people again, so oblivious, seemingly secure, and self-satisfied.
It could be worse, I tell myself as I drive to the store, feeling foolish. I could be home drinking. This is better than that. I park the car and feel like the poster child for low self-esteem as I walk toward the entrance. I know I look good, in that way that turns heads and has no business pushing a grocery cart around. Being in the entertainment business has taught me how to shine when I want to, and I do it so well that I almost consider it an unfair advantage. It is too effective. I can feel it working already as I wipe the cart handle down with the disinfecting wipes. I look lovely; I smell like somewhere you would want to vacation. My perfume floats on the breeze. It’s all superficial. It signifies nothing. It’s just a way to present myself that garners a reaction.
