Liz Phair is no stranger to explicit words. She's notorious for raw, blunt, sexual lyrics. Yet the word "underwear" didn't rub her the right way in the recording of her new album.

The debate came courtesy of "Favorite", which Phair co-wrote with her producers, The Matrix. The song compares a relationship to a tattered pair of undies: "Oh baby, know what you're like? You're like my favorite underwear/It just feels right."

Phair wasn't thrilled with the line and clashed with Lauren Christy, one of the producers in The Matrix.

"I was like, 'I'm not saying 'underwear,'" Phair recalls. "And she'd be like, 'You've got to, Liz, you've got to, it's the whole point of the song.' We would go back and forth about it."

Christy won Phair over. "Favorite" is a fun highlight of the album.

And there actually is an old pair of Phair's underwear connected to the song. On a recent trip to Chicago, a friend gave her some lingerie.

"And I'm like, 'You know what? I really need this, because you should see mine.' And I realized that I had the 'favorite underwear' in the luggage. It died in the last laundry. It's shredded beyond recognition now.

"My manager's like, 'Save it! Save it! In a year we can put it on eBay.'"