Liz Phair Turns 20, 30, 40, 50

Celebrating Exile in Guyville and her eponymous sellout album as they deserve — together

I’m a little bitch who loves to remind people how instructive the tentpoles of Liz Phair’s first decade in music are at illustrating the state of music criticism in their respective times. Exile in Guyville, her universally acclaimed classic debut, was one of four albums by women to win Village Voice’s vaunted Pazz & Jop critics’ poll in the ‘90s, the most in any decade (Hole, PJ Harvey, and Lucinda Williams were the other honorees, and Lauryn Hill actually had Lu beat in voters). Then Liz Phair, released almost exactly ten years later (this week, and this piece, are celebrating the 20th and 30th anniversary of both, respectively), infamously received a 0.0 rating from Pitchfork in a breakout era for online journalism that not coincidentally set things back for women for quite some time thanks to that kind of reactive rockist bullshit.

A woman didn’t win Pazz & Jop again until my beloved tUnE-yArDs flipped the vaporous Bon Iver on his ass in a surprise 2011 upset that Chuck Klosterman couldn’t get over, and there seems to be some kind of quiet problem with her now because her onetime fans at Pitchfork didn’t even review Merrill Garbus’ last album, which has to be some kind of statement. It’s a testament to how little the negative side of Pitchfork’s influence had creeped into the critical establishment in 2003 that Liz Phair still Pazzed out at a healthy #38, trouncing Broken Social Scene’s overrated You Forgot It in People, if not Pitchfork faves the Notwist (or fucking Kings of Leon’s debut).