#56 Liz Phair, 'Exile in Guyville' (1993)

The debut record by Liz Phair is seriously punching above its weight. Surely it would have had to have been voted #1 on one or two judges’ lists to make it this high up. Phair herself sums it up perfectly with her response to its reception on release: “don't really get what happened with Guyville. It was so normal, from my side of things. It was nothing remarkable, other than the fact that I'd completed a big project, but I'd done that before... 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... I just wanted people who thought I was not worth talking to, to listen to me.”