Jackson goes on a retreat in the Catskills with Brackett and choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. He tosses his Phair mash-ups but preserves her influence throughout A Strange Loop one song, “Inner White Girl,” references Phair’s “ Perfect World” in the lyric “They get to be cool, tall, vulnerable, and luscious.” I wrote my own and you should do the same,” Jackson recalls her saying. I didn’t use the Rolling Stones’s songs to do Exile in Guyville. In real life, Jackson is also trying to get Phair to say yes to his musical. The story is now about Usher trying to write a musical and get the rights to Phair’s songs its score is a mash-up of Jackson’s songs and Phair’s. , as well as Douglas Hofstadter’s concept of a strange loop. By 2010, Jackson has retitled the show A Strange Loop, inspired by the final track on Liz Phair’s 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, itself a response to the 1972 Rolling Stones album Exile on Main St.

He scraps all of “Why I Can’t Get Work” the main character is renamed Usher. From 2007 to 2011, Jackson turns Fast Food Town into a concept musical in the vein of Company and Passing Strange.