or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

My mom hates the word "fuck." She’s pretty cool about letting my siblings and I use terms that would probably be deemed inappropriate by anyone else, but when it comes to "that f-word" (we’re still not sure why she thinks she needs to use the article "that." I mean, what other f-word would we think she meant?), we’re forbidden to use it. So when mom caught part of a song off of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, she reacted accordingly: 'Did she just use that f-word?" Understandably, I was hesitant to explain that Phair’s use of "that f-word" was the least of her less than PG language. When Exile was released in 1994, Phair’s potty mouth earned much of the album’s publicity. Sure, she uses a lot of bad words, paints guys as losers and assholes, and talks about sex a lot. But Exile is more than pissed off potty mouthed girl rock - it’s a classic, or at least, Phair’s best work. Exile’s songs are catchy and direct, its lyricism unfaltering and clever.

"Never Said" was the album’s indie hit - Phair even made a video for it! Like much of the album, "Never Said" is guitar-based. But there are some exceptions to the album’s reliance on guitar. On "Explain It to Me," Phair, backed by bongos and a synthesizer, and sings of a boy whose actions she could never fathom. "Canary" is a pretty piano piece about a girl who does everything she’s told to do and her growing disgust with her submissiveness.

With a beat so catchy it could cure my mom of her aversion to that f-word, "Fuck and Run" is one of those songs that made rock journalists gasp. It features the classic line, "Fuck and run/ Even when I was twelve." But the song actually goes much deeper than that line - it tells of a girl’s desire for "a guy who tries to win you over" and "all the stupid old shit / Like letters and songs" as opposed to the one-night stands she keeps having. "Divorce Song" tells of lovers on a road trip who find that their relationship has soured. "It’s harder to be friends than lovers / And you shouldn’t try and mix the two," she says, "Because if you do it and you’re still not happy / Then you know that the problem is you." On "Girls Girls Girls," Phair tersely explains to a potential lover, "You’ve been around enough to see / If you think you’re it you better check with me / Because I take full advantage of every guy I meet."