Liz Phair was born in New Haven, Connecticut. Shortly after her birth, she was adopted by Dr. John and Nancy Phair, who already had an adopted son, Philip, and soon the family settled in the prosperous Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Illinois, where Dr. Phair took a position at Northwestern Hospital. When she was 7, Liz moved to England with her family for one year, where her father took a sabbatical. After attending New Trier High School, which she compares to the schools in John Hughes movies, Liz went to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she majored in Art History/Studio Art. During her college days, she became spellbound with the new underground music referred to as indie rock and in the process she became good friends with guitarist Chris Brokaw.
After working as an intern in New York for political artists Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, Liz moved to San Francisco with Brokaw with the hopes of becoming an artist. In 1991, she returned to Chicago and started writing songs. Brokaw was impressed with her skills and dared her to record a demo. Using a 4-track machine in her bedroom, she recorded three cassettes, a total of 32 songs, and these tapes became known as Girlysound.
At the same time, her interest in underground music grew and she befriended the band Urge Overkill, drummer Brad Wood, and John Henderson, the big cheese of independent label Feel Good All Over. Nevertheless, to make ends meet she had to sell charcoal drawings on the street. She re-recorded her music with Henderson and sent it to Brokaw who was now with the band Come. Brokaw forwarded the Girlysound tapes to Gerard Cosley, the head of Come's record label, Matador.
Cosley loved the new sound and gave Liz a $3,000 advance so she could write a single. One song turned into 18, resulting in her first album, Exile In Guyville, a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street. It was released in the summer of 1993 and garnered rave reviews. The record was a hit with critics and fans of alternative rock alike, and many considered it one of the best albums of the year.
Following her first tour in 1994, her song "Never Said" got airplay on MTV and when the record had finally run its course, it had sold over 200,000 copies -- quite a feat for an independent release. Matador had since struck a distribution deal with Atlantic Records, and so Liz Phair's second album, Whip-Smart, was released with much fanfare in the fall of 1994. Although "Supernova" showed its face on the top ten charts, this album was panned by the critics, and was a commercial failure.