How un-Phair

When Liz Phair arrives 20 minutes late for our lunch interview at the Peninsula Hotel, she is somewhat breathless, overly apologetic and slightly soft-spoken. "I promised my manager that I wasn't going to be late anymore," she says sheepishly.

This Liz Phair—polite, refined, even a little shy—isn't what you'd expect from the woman who first gained attention through singing unapologetically honest, fuck-me-or-fuck-you lyrics on her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville. But then again, who could have imagined back then that Wicker Park's former indie princess would be lunching at a chichi hotel restaurant? Or that she'd earn a gold record (2003's Liz Phair) by singing sugar-coated, radio-friendly songs such as "Extraordinary" and "Why Can't I?"

The shiny pop singles of Phair's self-titled disc helped it sell hundreds of thousands of copies, but they also cost Phair her cred. Critics widely panned the record—the indie-focused Pitchforkmedia.com gave it a miserly 0.0 out of 10—and old fans cringed as Phair headlined Maybelline's Chicks with Attitude tour.

For her part, Phair doesn't know what their problem is. "How can music piss people off that much?" she asks. The question seems real, not rhetorical. Does she feel that fans expect her to write songs in a certain style? "Clearly!" she says with a laugh. "That is so shocking. [With Liz Phair] I heard sort of a diary, a little scrapbook of where I've been with my favorite songs. I think, in the end, the listener just hears something different than I hear."

Both longtime and new-to-the-fold fans may have their expectations challenged yet again with Phair's latest, Somebody's Miracle. Its swingy, catchy songs blend straight-up rock, honky-tonk guitar and, yes, adult contemporary—that last aspect is courtesy of producers who've also finessed songs by Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer. Phair's gravelly alto holds the album together, but the production's so slick that her tunes could just as easily be sung by Shania Twain or Sheryl Crow.

If the individuality of Phair's voice is missing, though, her writing style is as honest as ever. Inspired by Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, Miracle is an intense voyage through Phair's emotions. "I try to learn from music and incorporate the things I really like into it. So I was taking Stevie Wonder and thinking, God, this is the kind of record that I wish we could put out today. All the stories, all the humanity, all the hope and the love, and the way that his songs are one and the same with the message—it doesn't back up the message, it's the same thing."

Does it work? Yes and no. A few lovey-dovey songs run saccharine, but others are poignant and deeply personal. Consider "Table For One," a sad twanger about her brother's alcoholism: "I want to die alone with my sympathy beside me / I want to bring down all those demons who drank with me / feasting gleefully on my desperation." Phair calls that period one of the hardest in her life. "He's past that now, but that's sort of how I was approaching it," she says. "Like, What is that thing in my life that I can open a window on that's painful, but it's still true?"

At 38, Phair is done with reckless behavior. "There's a lot I regret," she says. "I think that's a good marker of your age. I don't regret getting married, but I wish I'd been more thoughtful about what a marriage meant. And I regret the way I left the marriage; I regret that Nick [Phair's son with ex-husband Jim Staskauskas] had to go through a divorce, that I wasn't a better mother earlier."

Perhaps it's Phair's newfound maturity that comes with age, but there's one thing conspicuously missing from Miracle: sexually fierce songs about blow-job queens and "hot white cum." "I just didn't write any songs like that," she explains. "I've been in a relationship [with guitarist Dino Meneghin] for a bit and my issues are more about commitment, regret, love. It was just natural."

Although Phair has learned to handle her notorious stage fright—during her four-night stand at the Black Orchid in August, she was a confident chanteuse—she remains nervous about her status in the music world. "The more photo shoots I do, the more people I have to meet and greet, the more insecure I become," she says. It's a paradox we can't relate to: as Phair's latent mainstream appeal surfaces, so do her insecurities. And it might take a lot more than a Miracle to reverse that hex.

Somebody's Miracle is out Tuesday 4 on Capitol. Liz Phair plays Vic Theatre October 25.