I think I'll start calling the album Omni-Op instead of Omnipop," laughs L.A.-based singer-songwriter Sam Phillips. "The term 'pop' or 'popular' may not be totally appropriate when referring to this music." Phillips is, at least in part, referring to the mixed notices she's currently receiving for Omnipop (It's Only a Flesh Wound Lambchop), her fourth album for Virgin Records and, some say, a peculiar departure from her established folk-pop roots. "It's really hit a nerve; people either love it and think it's the best thing I've ever done, or they slag it almost unmercifully."
A quick glance at the song titles--"Faster Pussycat to the Library!," "Plastic Is Forever," "Animals on Wheels"--reveals a songwriter more intrigued by adventure than tradition, and the songs themselves branch the performer out in myriad directions, including industrial rock and lounge pop. "What I started out to do on this record was to make every song different from the next," she explains. "But even though there are a lot of musical styles--hence the name Omnipop--it really ended up getting connected and the songs came out with a kind of central theme, at least lyrically."
Phillips blueprinted the songs for Omnipop while working on the set of last summer's Bruce Willis movie, Die Hard With a Vengeance. Though she played only a small part in the film--as the mute girlfriend of villain Jeremy Irons--she had to stay on location for almost two months, which meant a lot of free time on set. "It was a big, macho picture, very male-dominated, and I think some of that feeling came out while I was writing songs for the record," she says. The presence of two vintage Playboy magazines in her trailer also helped fuel her imagination. "It's amazing how innocuous Playboy seems now," she snickers. "To a feminist, it's just laughable in its innocence. Even the jokes."
Her fascination with that bygone age of sexual naiveti and the ever-confounding notions of male identity are worked into the album in songs like "Your Hands" and "Entertainmen." "I love men," Phillips declares. "I'm interested in how they work, how you get them to like you, how you understand them. I just don't understand them at all." That confusion surfaces most effectively on the album's closer, "Slapstick Heart," a song in which the telling line--"when I jump, you move the net"--sums up Phillips' idea of a lot of people's romantic endeavors. "I just threw it all out there and hopefully people will have a laugh at my expense." Aside from being Omnipop's most revealing track, "Slapstick Heart" is also the album's only collaboration--Phillips shared songwriting chores with none other than R.E.M.
"They sent a B-side over to T-Bone to work on," she recalls, referring to her husband and producer, T-Bone Burnett, "but he was busy and couldn't come up with anything he liked in time, so it sat there for a while." Phillips then decided to have a go at it herself. "I took the chorus of their instrumental, wrote a melody over the changes, and put it together with a piece of another one of my songs. Basically, I raped and pillaged their song. They were, as always, very generous and wonderful when they heard it. They said, 'God, we couldn't believe you could make a song out of that!'" Interestingly, Phillips intended the song for the Die Hard With a Vengeance soundtrack, but the director thought it was too dark. "It did describe a little bit about the Bruce Willis character in the film that didn't get developed."
The process of writing "Slapstick Heart" was indicative of an ongoing change in the working relationship between Phillips and Burnett, who has also produced artists like Counting Crows and Elvis Costello. Not many artists have the luxury of sharing the bathroom sink and the mixing board with their spouse: Burnett has produced his wife's last three records, including Omnipop, but it's an arrangement Phillips sees coming to an end. "On this record, T-Bone was kind of like the Hugh Hefner character, just making sure everyone's glasses were filled. He didn't play much guitar and I had specific ideas about who I wanted to do what. I like his ideas, and he's got great instincts and really good taste. But for me, now, I think it's time for a change."