Extraordinary

With her self-titled album, Liz Phair introduced a new sound to her work. The album was a success and brought her to the attention of mainstream audiences, but it also caused great criticism from some of her former fans and some in the independent music press, which accused her of selling out. This song, about a woman in love with an exasperating man who doesn't understand her, became one of her biggest hits, reaching #28 on the Top 40 Mainstream Chart. ESPN used it in their coverage of women's college basketball.

Phair wrote this with the songwriting team The Matrix, whose hits include "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne and "The Remedy" by Jason Mraz. Bringing in The Matrix was a sure sign Phair was phishing phor a hit, something that wouldn't have gone over well in her days on the Lilith Fair.

Phair spoke of the public's conflicting opinions of the album in an interview with Yahoo! Music: "I didn't really anticipate the polarizing effect that this record would have because of my past career - that a lot of people were holding on to the sense of me as I was in the early '90s, and that there was gonna be this kind of dividing line between people who were into what I was doing now and people who wanted me to be the way I was when I was just starting out. And it was funny, because I think where I went to college [Oberlin], we're trained to be provocateurs. Like, a lot of my friends who are in the entertainment industry as well, who went to school with me, are also lightning rods for controversy. So I realized as this record came out, there would be, like, glowing reviews in People, and then lacerating reviews in the San Francisco Daily or whatever. And it was so funny because I thought, you know, I didn't anticipate this, but this is so me, you know? Getting in trouble. Always getting in trouble."