PHAIR GAME

Liz Phair's Exile in Avril-ville (MEGHAN O'ROURKE, June 22, 2003, NY Times)

In 1993, the year Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" came out, legions of young, middle-class, well-educated women found in her lo-fi debut a kind of all-purpose autobiography, and a template - smart, deadpan, but also earnest - for making sense of their own experience. Within a year Ms. Phair went from being a 26-year-old singer-songwriter who had performed live some half-dozen times to the woman on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline "Liz Phair: A Rock and Roll Star Is Born." The obvious question was: Would Ms. Phair be able to sustain her success?

Ten years later, having put out two albums, "Whip-Smart" (1994) and "whitechocolatespaceegg" (1998), that were both greeted with mixed praise, she is now releasing her fourth - the eponymously titled and much anticipated "Liz Phair." It is, Ms. Phair has suggested, her bid for center stage - the moment when she will finally make the leap from indie-rock quasi-stardom to teen-pop levels of superstardom.

Instead, she has committed an embarrassing form of career suicide.

Well, if it's not suicide, this is for dang sure attempted career homicide. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 9:11 AM