Power Pop Wednesday: Liz Phair and Hermione and Women Who Rock

As a lover of early ’90s alternative rock, it’s practically illegal for me to NOT like Liz Phair.

Oh, Liz, with your girl-I-would-date looks and WAY-out-of-my-league fantastically filthy mind, you charmed me to no end with your ability to wield a guitar and sweet-talk into the microphone with a voice built for power-pop, all while looking … well … like that. *Sigh*

Probably not surprisingly, I did date a girl who looked like Liz (she was in the picture before the world had heard of the fair Ms. Phair, and anyway that’s another story for another time), but my fondness for her goes far beyond looks. As I noted above, she broke out with the rawest/sweetest of indie sounds at a time when “raw” and “independent” were terms that pretty accurately described my mental and emotional state.

So why pair her with Hermione? Plenty of 20-something guys and gals came upon the brilliant, stubborn and increasingly enchanting character of Hermione at a very young age, giving girls a fictional character to look up to and boys a clear idea of how attractive and just generally awesome smart and independent women can be.

I can’t take credit for the fantastic video combo of Phair’s song “Love/Hate” from her self-titled album, but it surely does fit, doesn’t it? So revel in the fact that we have women in the world – both musical and fictional – who remind us of feminine badassery in such delightful ways.