Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(40/100)
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Entertainment Weekly	A−
The Guardian
Pitchfork Media	(0/10)
PopMatters
Robert Christgau	A
Rolling Stone
Slant Magazine
Spin	(5/10)
Stylus Magazine	F

Liz Phair is the fourth 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.

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 known as The Matrix. The Matrix was known primarily for producing glossy hits for female singers such as Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, and Hilary Duff. Phair ultimately collaborated with The Matrix on four songs: "Why Can't I?", "Extraordinary", "Favorite", and "Rock Me".

Although the album introduced Phair to a mainstream audience for the first time, its success brought about a backlash from critics and disappointed fans of her earlier work. On MetaCritic, a review aggregator site, the album holds a score of 40/100, indicating "mixed or average reviews." Many decried her for "selling out", and she became a "piñata for critics".The New York Times' Meghan O'Rourke titled her review of the album "Liz Phair's Exile in Avril-ville", and complained that Phair "gushes like a teenager" and had "committed an embarrassing form of career suicide."Pitchfork Media gave the album a 0.0, the lowest score on the website's rating scale. In his review, Pitchfork critic Matt LeMay stated "it's sad that an artist as groundbreaking as Phair would be reduced to cheap publicity stunts and hyper-commercialized teen-pop."

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Wikipedia