Critical Reception
| 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 |
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. 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 crtic 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."
Read more about this topic: Liz Phair (album)
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