For many music fans, springtime is often overlooked in anticipation of the upcoming Summer months. Long, bright sunny days packed full of stacked artist tours, good weather festivals, and fresh new releases. With so many of us looking towards the future, we often forget to reflect on not only the present, but how far we have come as well. March was Women’s History Month, and with that came the opportunity to take a look at the particularly special role women play in music history. Not only the impact they have made sonically, but also their influence on the cultural narratives that are reflected through their music.
One genre in which women’s roles are often overlooked is indie rock. Typically characterized by an unrefined sound achieved through intentionally stripped-down production and the use of pedals such as overdrive, distortion and reverb. The genre also traditionally emphasizes independent record labels and DIY operations. Its foundations are notoriously credited to male-fronted bands such as The Smiths and Joy Division. However, what may be lesser known, is that the highly definitive attributes and attitudes of what would become present-day indie rock, were laid by a woman.
Like so many other young twenty-somethings, Liz Phair found herself broke when returning home to the suburbs of Chicago in the early 1990s after a failed start at a music career in San Francisco. Perhaps the success can be credited to the magic of being reconnected to the windy-city indie scene where Phair came of age, because after writing and recording the tapes that would eventually become Exile in Guyville alone in her room, it was passed around through friends until it landed in the hands of independent record label Matador. The label then studio recorded and released the album on June 22, 1993.
Three of the album’s most distinguishable characteristics are its lo-fi sound, her low and laid-back monotone voice that gives the songs an almost impassive affection and distant feel, and the utter emotional honesty with which she delivered her lyrics. Phair’s voice is straightforward, conveying her most intimate feelings and perceptions surrounding relationships, sex, and her identity. It cuts right through the ringing guitars, displaying a broad range of skill. Tracks like the single “Never Said” feature bright, repetitive notes repeated simply throughout the song, while other deeper cuts feature ear-catching guitar melodies layered with hazy distortion driving the song, such as the album’s 13th track “Shatter.”
All of these are familiar characteristics of indie rock today, with Guyville’s history on display across a wide variety of the genre’s own subgenres. There is Mom Jeans and Remo Drive in the more punk-leaning indie rock scenes, both of which are notorious for their flat monotonic voices over impressively simple-but-complex buildable guitar progressions. Its lo-fi, DIY sound with metallic reverberating guitars placed the foundation for bedroom pop, one of the most popular indie subgenres today. Female-fronted indie bands and projects of today like Frankie Cosmos, Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy, reflect a lot of similar characteristics in both their instrumentation and themes. A common thread between all of these contemporary indie bands is the confessional feel of their lyrics. Similar to Phair with Guyville, much of their subject matter surrounds struggles in relationships, insecurities, and their deepest emotional vulnerabilities.
These well-loved attributes of the album were only solidified with the 2018 25th anniversary re-release of the album titled Girly-Sound to Guyville. It was a complete reissue along with the full set of original demo tapes recorded between 1992 and 1993 under an ode to her original stage name, giving even further documentation of the album’s origins, both sonically and physically. The production is completely stripped-down on these tapes, with Phair’s distinctive vocals drifting over catchy, jangling guitar riffs. This was only possible by the centuries’ development of affordable music technologies and the accessibility of DAWs at home and outside of the studio space. The perfectly imperfect, fuzzy, grainy guitar is synonymous with the knowledge of an artist that is truly DIY. Immediately the mind is flooded with images of Phair sitting in her bed, or perhaps at a small desk, bent over with guitar in hand and cassettes rolling on in her 4-track tape recorder. To the contemporary indie fans ear, this sounds like the first self-made album or EP of a favorite band before they were signed to their first record label, but in 1993 it was revolutionary.
In addition to being so musically influential, Exile in Guyville also smashed stagnant cultural norms with Phair’s unabashed exploration of sexuality within the album’s lyrics and themes. When the album was released in June of 1993, many of the popular songs at the time were performed by women and written about love. More often than not, showcasing women in the position of being powerless and completely consumed to the point of detriment by their love. Lyrics from the most popular song at the time of Exile in Guyville’s release, “That’s The Way Love Goes” by Janet Jackson starts with the lyrics, “Like moth to a flame / Burned by the fire / My love is blind / Can’t you see my desire,” which is repeated throughout the song. Along a similar vein, the second most popular song, “Weak” by SWV has lyrics, “I get so weak in the knees / I can hardly speak / I lose all control / … By my side, I swallow my pride / … Can’t explain why your love, it makes me weak.” On the contrary, the most popular songs at the time performed by men were also about relationships, but instead of finding themselves helpless to a love so strong that they lose control, these songs typically showcase men in positions of sexual and emotional power. Lyrical content often included vivid descriptions of sexual acts and/or judgment or approval of women’s features, all while maintaining individual agency. Both the third and fourth top songs that week, “Knockin’ Da Boots” by H-Town and “Freak Me” by Silk, feature explicit subject matter solely about the physical act of sex with a woman, with a majority of lyrical content describing their physical bodies.
Even when a song’s subject matter was about more than sexual intimacy and discussed being faced with vulnerable situations, men still held the emotional power and, as always, with equanimity. Coming in at number nineteen, reggae artist Snow woes about being cheated on in the song “Girl, I’ve Been Hurt,” “I’m in love but love doesn’t blind me / Now I’m moving on and leaving you behind me baby / … Girl I’ve been hurt now I need another lover.” Even when avoiding direct commodification, the representation of women in music in the early 1990s was one where they were still seen as objects, easily replaceable once no longer acting in line with societal expectations.
In almost complete contrast to what listeners were hearing on the radio, Exile in Guyville sees Phair designating all of the power in the voice of a woman. The album’s cynical tone is set immediately with the album’s opening lyrics of the song “6’1,” “I bet you fall in bed too easily / With the beautiful girls who are shyly brave.” Famously, the album’s 14th track “Flower,” is a rather explicit song that aims to sexualize and physically objectify men in the same way that was not only common, but ordinary in the culture towards women, as exemplified with “Knockin’ Da Boots” and “Freak Me.” Even when the song’s speakers are experiencing hurt at the hands of love, similar to their radio counterparts, Phair keeps the power in the voice of the female speaker. Such as in “Fuck and Run,” a song that portrays a woman who desires a committed romantic relationship, but instead participates in countless hookups and one-night stands, leading her to ultimately conclude that she will never get what she truly yearns for. She sings, “Just that I woke up in your arms / And almost immediately felt sorry / ‘Cause I didn’t think this would happen again / No matter what I could do or say / … With or without my best intentions,” thus inverting the stereotype by showcasing a female speaker struggling with non-committal tendencies. The one inflicting the emotional pain on the other. The complete opposite of what was being reflected in the mainstream music of the early 1990s. Here, the speaker is asking for sympathy, not for herself, but for the men that she uses in this repeated cycle.
Not only does “Fuck and Run” completely flip the gendered norms that were being reflected at the time, the lyrics go even further to place men in the position of criticism. In her trademark low, sultry voice, she croons, “And whatever happened to a boyfriend / The kind of guy who tries to win you over / … The kind of guy who makes love cause he’s in it.” In Guyville, there is no lovesick girl utterly overcome by her love and desire, just a woman awakening to the sobering feelings of disillusionment and nonfulfillment at what love has offered her so far.
Exile in Guyville was extremely well received by critics and fans at the time of its release. Perhaps this shows just how great the need was for a musical space in which women could express themselves without shame, being as vulgar and as critical as they wanted. A place where they could assume the societal roles that they had been denied, but were so freely expressed by their masculine counterparts.
Even Phair herself said that much of the album’s primary subject material was not about her own experiences, stating that “a lot of Guyville is bullshit, total made-up fantasy crap.” Despite this, commonly shared sentiment amongst feminine-identifying Guyville listeners, then and now, is that the album is radically reaffirming their femininity. It has helped listeners reclaim their sexuality or find in Phair role model for the type of woman they wanted to be, outspoken, confident and articulate.
Ultimately, Phair recognizes Guyville’s place as a piece of feminist work, despite not thinking she did anything out of the ordinary to make it so. Phair told Rolling Stone, “I don’t really get what happened with Guyville. It was so normal, from my side of things. Being emotionally forthright was the most radical thing I did. And that was taken to mean something bigger in terms of women’s roles in society and women’s roles in music.”
A monumental thirty-one years later, Exile in Guyville stands out as “the quintessential example of Indie Rock,” an era-defining blueprint of the genre for decades to come. Research shows that within the music industry, women claim the most space in the indie rock genre specifically. It’s not lengthy reach to assume Liz Phair laid a trail for young female indie musicians looking for a place in the music industry, inspiring many to follow her lead and take their place in what was previously such an inaccessible genre. Perhaps even better is that this inspiration is reciprocal. In an article with NME Magazine in which Phair discusses how seeing so many inspirational female guitarists today pulled her out of musical retirement, she said, “I can’t even tell you how different that is from the way it was when I was younger. It was all men, all the time. … To have supportive, understanding, like-minded individuals would’ve made a huge difference. I feel like I’ve lived my entire career on the defensive – all the time.”
While the music industry has come a long way for women since the early 1990s, it is a well-known fact that women still face a lot of challenges in the music industry. From the ever-present gender gap, the fact that half of the women within the industry have faced discrimination throughout their career, or the ways in which their role in musical history has been purposefully ignored or overlooked; it is only by continuing to acknowledge and uplift female voices in the music industry, both in the past through our history and by maintaining a safe, open creative space for women in music in the present, can the gendered inequality in music ever be completely mended.
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