10 Worst Sellout Rock Albums Of All Time
6. Liz Phair - Liz Phair
Liz Phair tends to be one of the unsung heroes of the '90s rock movement. Right alongside the riot grrl contemporaries like Hole and L7, Phair burst onto the scene with Exile in Guyville, where she called her shot as one of the most important female presences in alternative music. She may have started off strong, but the '00s ended up being very cruel to the alt-rock princess.
Coming into 2003, Phair's fourth album ended up sounding like the polar opposite of her usual sound. While fans had expected their goddess to shake things up, most of her eponymous record just sounds like she's reinventing herself as a pop rocker. Even on paper, this sounded like something that a songwriter of Phair's caliber could pull off, but one track after the next feels like a shell of her former self.
From front to back, this entire record is filled to the brim with filler material and allusions to the youthful pop punk energy that was taking the world by storm at the time. There's nothing inherently wrong with these tracks, but the mind behind masterpieces like "Never Said" has no business writing songs that could be B-sides for Avril Lavigne. She may have been all the rage just a few years before, but with one album, Liz Phair went from one of the voices of her generation to a discount pop punk act.