Chicago, IL · indie rock

Liz Phair

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'Exile in Guyville' rewired indie rock's rules — blunt, brilliant, foundational, and still the reference point three decades on.

Liz Phair was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised largely in Winnetka, a Chicago suburb. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1990 with a degree in art history, then tried to start a career in San Francisco before returning home broke. Back in Chicago, she recorded songs on a four-track under the name Girly-Sound, tapes that circulated widely enough to bring her a contract with Matador Records.

Her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, was framed as a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St., pairing lo-fi arrangements with blunt writing about sex, ambivalence and the men around her. Rolling Stone later placed it among the 500 greatest albums ever made, and it remains a reference point for indie rock songwriting.

Whip-Smart followed in 1994 and brought Phair a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance; whitechocolatespaceegg came in 1998. Her fourth album, the self-titled Liz Phair, moved onto Capitol Records in 2003 with a glossier pop-rock sound. The single 'Why Can't I?' reached number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100, winning new listeners while alienating longtime critics.

Somebody's Miracle followed in 2005, after which Phair left Capitol and self-released Funstyle in 2010. In 2018, Matador issued a retrospective box for Exile in Guyville that included remastered Girly-Sound demos, and Soberish arrived in 2021. She has sold more than three million records worldwide and published a memoir.

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indie rock