Liz Phair (album)


Liz Phair is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Liz Phair, released June 24, 2003 on Capitol Records. "Why Can't I?" and "Extraordinary" were released as singles. Phair began production on the album with Michael Penn. Liz Phair debuted at #27 on the Billboard 200. As of July 2010, the album had sold 433,000 copies.

Background

Initially, Phair worked on tracks for the album with songwriter Michael Penn as the producer, but the finished album received a lukewarm reception from Capitol. Having already exhausted the recording budget, label president Andy Slater offered Phair more money to record if she agreed to work on possible singles with the production team the Matrix, who had worked with singers such as Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, and Hilary Duff. Phair collaborated with The Matrix on "Why Can't I?", "Extraordinary", "Favorite", and "Rock Me".

Critical reception

Liz Phair was met with mixed reviews from critics. At Metacritic, a review aggregator site, the album holds a score of 40 out of 100. Many decried Phair for "selling out", and she became a "piñata for critics", according to The New York Times. The newspaper's Meghan O'Rourke titled her review of the album "Liz Phair's Exile in Avril-ville", and complained that Phair "gushes like a teenager", having "committed an embarrassing form of career suicide." Matt LeMay from Pitchfork rated the album a 0.0 out of 10, stating, "it's sad that an artist as groundbreaking as Phair would be reduced to cheap publicity stunts and hyper-commercialized teen-pop."
Others were more enthusiastic about the record. Reviewing for Entertainment Weekly, Chris Willman described it as "an honestly fun summer disc," noting "Little Digger" and "Rock Me" as highlights. Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani also described the album positively, calling Phair "frank and funny" singling out "It's Sweet," "My Bionic Eyes," and "Rock Me" as noteworthy tracks. Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice that it included "no bad songs" while crediting Phair for "successfully fusing the personal and the universal, challenging lowest-common-denominator values even as it fellates them". Years later, when asked about the criticism it had received from reviewers such as LeMay, Christgau said:

Track listing

Personnel

Weekly charts

Certifications