Cancel
CreatorsPublishersAdvertisers

Liz Phair

avatar
Liz Phair
Elizabeth Clark Phair (born April 17, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter known for her blunt, honest, and explicit lyrics about sex and relationships. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Phair was adopted at birth and raised primarily in the Chicago area. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1990, she attempted to start a musical career in San Francisco, California, but returned to her home in Chicago, where she began self-releasing audio cassettes under the name Girly Sound. The tapes led to a recording contract with the independent record label Matador Records. Her 1993 debut studio album, Exile in Guyville, was released to critical acclaim; it has been ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Phair followed this with her second album, Whip-Smart (1994), which earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and Whitechocolatespaceegg (1998). Ten years after the release of her debut, Phair's fourth album, Liz Phair (2003), released on Capitol Records, moved towards pop rock, earning her a mainstream audience; the single "Why Can't I?" peaked at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100. After the release of her fifth album, Somebody's Miracle (2005), Phair left Capitol and released her sixth album Funstyle independently in 2010. In 2016, she toured as an opening act for the Smashing Pumpkins. In 2018, it was announced that Matador Records would be releasing a retrospective set for Phair's debut album Exile in Guyville which includes remastered recordings from her original Girly Sound demo tapes. As of 2011, Phair had sold over three million records worldwide.
Expandarrow_down
Born
1967-04-17
Birth Place
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Expandarrow_down
POTUSPosted by
Vogue Magazine

Liz Phair on Creativity, Sobriety, and Releasing Her First Album In 11 Years

Dropped seemingly out nowhere during the summer of 1993, Exile in Guyville was Liz Phair’s album-length middle finger to male entitlement and rock misogyny. The mainstream music press spent as much time balking at the lyrical content—“I'm a real c--t in spring / You can rent me by the hour”—as it did heaping praise on Phair’s unorthodox arrangements and sneering vocal delivery. Conceived as a track-by-track response to The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, Guyville quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation. It also set up wildly unbalanced expectations for the then-26-year old, a recent Oberlin grad who recorded the demos for Guyville on a dinky four track in her Chicago bedroom.
Picture for Liz Phair on Creativity, Sobriety, and Releasing Her First Album In 11 Years
Musicarcamax.com

Album reviews: Liz Phair, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Rostam

While Liz Phair last released an album of new material in 2010 (the regrettable "Funstyle," her diversion into hip-hop), she’s been rebooting her career for the past few years. In 2018 she released an expanded edition of her '90s classic "Exile in Guyville" including early "Girly-Sound" demos. Then in 2019, she published the memoir "Horror Stories."
Picture for Album reviews: Liz Phair, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Rostam
RELATED CHANNELS
News Break
Entertainment
News Break
Music
MusicColumbia Daily Tribune

New music from Liz Phair, Crowded House and more

Crowded House, "Dreamers are Waiting" (EMI) Neil Finn is one of our truly gifted songwriters. Whatever name he's working under, listeners know they're in for smart pop with the perfect mix of pathos and good humor. Crowded House made Finn, and to Crowded House he returns for the first the band album since 2010. Here, the lineup includes stalwart bassist Nick Seymour, Finn's sons Liam and Elroy, as well as longtime producer Mitchell Froom.
POTUSPosted by
Newsweek

Liz Phair Gets Back in the Game

Last year was supposed to have been a big one for Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Liz Phair, who shook up the indie rock world almost 30 years ago with her debut Exile in Guyville. In 2020 she was scheduled to release Soberish, her first new album in 10 years, and embark on a summer tour with Alanis Morissette and Garbage. The pandemic suspended those plans. The pause, though, gave Phair time to update the record. She remembers thinking, "Well, if it's going to come out a year from now, we have to make it for then. Here's the things that I think are going to be in place: Trump will have lost, we're also going to be coming out of the pandemic at that exact moment. We want the comfort of sounds of the past, but we want the energy of something brand new—because we're all gonna be brand new again."
RELATED PEOPLE
Person
Lou Reed
MusicVulture

Liz Phair on Her Best Songs and Humbly Defining Generations of Indie Rock

“Can I give a caveat before we start?” Liz Phair is letting me know that she’s going to do her best to talk about Liz Phair. It’s also a warning. “I don’t really do favorites,” she explains. “We’re asking my brain to do something it doesn’t naturally do.” She delivers the news with a smile palpable through the phone; this is someone who doesn’t need to apologize but who still feels apologetic for not being what she describes as a “favorite-ing” person. “It would make my job a lot easier,” she deadpans. This self-aware, and kind, candor is what makes Liz Phair such an engaging personality and artist whose albums are remarkably accessible in their transparency; her 1991 lo-fi tapes as Girly-Sound and her Matador debut, 1993’s Exile in Guyville, remain some of indie rock’s most beloved works of bluntness, each sounding as vivid and knowing as they did nearly 30 years ago. Meanwhile, in hindsight, her much-panned 2003 self-titled LP now sounds equally influential on today’s younger musicians as her classics.
MusicThe Guardian

Liz Phair: Soberish review – arresting lyrics in a sea of coffee-table pop

It’s almost three decades since Liz Phair brought uncompromisingly frank lyrics and a feminist sensibility to the boys’ club that was the early 90s US alt-rock scene. In her first album in 11 years, she is reunited with Brad Wood, producer of her career high points, 1993’s Exile in Guyville and the following year’s Whip-Smart. But anybody hoping for a return to the days when she was a genuinely exciting proposition will be disappointed: the focus here is far more on the mainstream pop and soft-rock of Phair’s post-94 oeuvre than the spiky indie that preceded it.
Musicaudioinkradio.com

Alanis Morissette, Garbage and Liz Phair to Embark on Worldwide Tour

“Jagged Little Pill” recently passed its 25th anniversary, and in honor, Alanis Morissette is hitting the road on an international tour. Alanis Morissette will celebrate the 25th anniversary of her seminal “Jagged Little Pill” album with a cross-country tour, which was originally set to take place in 2020 but was postponed due to the worldwide pandemic. Garbage and Liz Phair will open on the tour.
RELATED PUBLISHERS
Publisher
Vogue Magazine
MusicVulture

Liz Phair Is Back in ‘The Game’ With New Album Soberish

Musicians can come and go over the course of a decade, but then there’s Liz Phair. She not only outlasted the 1990s after becoming one of its defining rock artists, but has returned with a new album, Soberish, ten years and 11 months after 2010’s Funstyle. The new album finds Phair returning to right-hand producer Brad Wood, who helmed her classics Exile in Guyville, Whip-Smart, and Whitechocolatespaceegg. The way Phair sees it, actually, Soberish is her “first proper, thought-through, totally crafted album since Whitechocolatespaceegg,” which came out in 1998, as she told Stereogum in a recent interview. On top of it all, Phair has been talking about Soberish since she released new song “Good Side” in fall 2019, before the album got delayed due to label shakeups and the pandemic.
Celebritiesarcamax.com

Liz Phair is totally good with being a Gen X feminist in a Gen Z world

Before it was legal in California, Liz Phair never used to buy weed. "I'd always preferred it to drinking, but I wanted to be able to stand up in a court — courts terrify me — and be like, 'I did not buy illegal drugs,'" the veteran indie-rock star says. "So at a party I'd be the one standing outside the bathroom: 'What are you guys doing in there?'"
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
News Break
Celebrities
News Break
Politics
News Break
U.S. Politics
News Break
POTUS
Musicmsn.com

Soberish review: Liz Phair probes 21st-century life's gray areas

Contradictions live at the heart of Liz Phair's songwriting: the tensions between love and lust, flirtation and consummation, finely wrought emotions and pop-song grandeur. Take the title Soberish, her seventh album and first in 11 years. Any pretenses toward the staid or clear-minded are upended by those three letters at the end, which imply at least a passing thought or two about altering one's mind. It's an apt title for an album that probes 21st-century life's many gray areas while tossing off memorable choruses.
Musicinews.co.uk

Liz Phair, Soberish, review: Enjoyable nostalgia

In the 90s, Liz Phair made her name with whip-smart indie-rock during a time when few women musicians were afforded the chance to be heard. Her career has careened from alt-rock outsider to pop star to memoirist and perhaps ill-advised hip hop artist. Now it circles back again. Soberish is...
MusicPosted by
The Independent

Album reviews: Japanese House – Jubilee, and Liz Phair – Soberish

Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee★★★★★Michelle Zauner is among the rarest breed of musicians, the type who has a debut novel on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time that their critically acclaimed third album is released.Jubilee is an evolution for Zauner, who records under the moniker Japanese Breakfast. The indie singer’s previous albums – 2016’s Psychopomp and 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet – were meditations on mourning following the death of her mother. Her newly released debut memoir Crying in H Mart (based on her viral New Yorker essay from 2014) is grounded in the same grief.Jubilee’s...
MusicPopMatters

Liz Phair Enjoys an Assured Return with the Strong ‘Soberish’

With her debut album Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair reset the female singer-songwriter genre in much the same way that artists like Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Chrissie Hynde, and Patti Smith did. The classic record’s raw emotion resonated with its listeners who made the record a modern classic. So much of Phair’s career afterward was responding to the overwhelming influence of Guyville and its looming presence over the rest of her discography. The album’s refreshing and startling honesty and naked sound was a refreshing blast of fresh air.
Holmdel, NJnewjerseystage.com

Alanis Morissette, Garbage and Liz Phair To Play Shows In Camden & Holmdel

Seven-time GRAMMY(R) Award-winning singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette will celebrate 25 years of Jagged Little Pill with a 2021-2022 world tour kicks off August 12, 2021 in Austin, TX. The tour comes to BB&T Pavilion in Camden on August 26 and the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel on September 1st. On this special anniversary tour, Alanis will perform her iconic album Jagged Little Pill in its entirety, as well as a variety of hits including tracks from her latest album, Such Pretty Forks in the Road. Alanis will be joined by Garbage and Liz Phair.
MusicAmerican Songwriter

The Soberish Reflections Of Liz Phair

It’s tempting to say that the new crop of female singer-songwriters wouldn’t quite have the freedom and leeway that they enjoy today without Liz Phair having cleared a path for them. But you can also argue that her acolytes have never quite approached the fearlessness and unfiltered honesty of Phair’s finest work. No shame if they haven’t, because that’s a pretty high standard indeed.