When a friend of mine told me she was obsessed with Liz Phair’s newly released debut album, Exile in Guyville (1993), I had no idea what she was talking about. She and I had very different tastes so I wasn’t sure if I’d like the album at all and the first time I listened I didn’t really get it. I liked a couple of songs enough to keep listening, though. And then I was hooked, too. Phair could switch from self-loathing despair to unabashed eroticism (which I’d never heard expressed in quite this way before) from one song to the next. She pulled no punches. And it was glorious.
Sometimes the first album you ever hear from an artist remains your favorite even though the albums that follow are as good or better. This is true for Exile in Guyville.
The first song that is now a compulsory listen for me is “Dance of the Seven Veils.” It actually took me awhile but this is also now my favorite Liz Phair song. (And I think it’s the only use of the C-word that doesn’t bother me.) There’s something uplifting about the shift from gritty, plain-spoken description of relationship conflict (understatement) in the verses to the self-knowing falsetto of the chorus. It’s compelling.
“Divorce Song” was the first of Phair’s tracks that drew me in. It deals with a woman’s realization that her relationship is over and the difficulty that exists when both people just aren’t on the same page—especially when one person is acting out of integrity and the other just doesn’t want to face reality.
BONUS TRACK
Soberish, Phair’s first studio album in eleven years, was released in 2021. This is what she had to say about its inception:
"When Prince died and Bowie died, my manager called me and he's like, 'What are you doing with your career? Do you know you could be dead tomorrow? Are you making the work now that you would want to leave behind if it were your last?' It would have been terrible if I had died after [Funstyle, the last album she released in 2010]. I will not make that mistake again.”
I love that kind of honest self-assessment and Soberish is well worth your time. And “The Game” is my favorite song on it:
Liz Phair