Two singers with debut albums that will last forever: Lauryn Hill and Liz Phair
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Where to start with Lauryn Hill? The singer rose to world fame with the Fugees in the ’90s, but the hip hop of The Score and covers of No Woman, No Cry (Bob Marley) and Killing Me Softly (Lori Lieberman) stayed. But Hill upped the ante after the band’s surprisingly early end with “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.”
ROLLING STONE author and 90s expert Jens Balzer wrote in his entry about the LP of the last “20th century soul superstar” for the List of the 500 greatest albums of all time: “A record of urgent social criticism and all-embracing spirituality, performed in the soft patois of the Caribbean, held and driven by the most advanced beats of the time, sharply polished and wonderfully grooving.”
In other words: a document and monument of its time (and ranked 42nd among the best albums). Lauryn Hill is now performing her 25th anniversary masterpiece live this fall in North America and some gigs in Australia/New Zealand. The Fugees are also part of the opening act at eleven dates in the USA and Canada.
Liz Phair and the angry girly sound
A little older than The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. The formidable singer’s debut will be performed in full on an 18-date North American tour to mark her 30th birthday. Once seen as a middle finger towards the male rock scene, the record is a dizzying, postmodern pastiche of 18 often enigmatic tracks that play on, reinterpret, dissect, reassemble the songs of the Stones’ “Exile On Main St.”
And Europe or Germany? Unfortunately come up empty. These events show how important it is, especially for female artists, to present their most important albums again in full length and on stage in all their glory. Maybe there’s a chance next year.