Pitchfork gave Liz Phair's album a 0.0. The lead single went top 40.

Picture this. You are Liz Phair. You wrote 'Exile in Guyville' in your bedroom in Chicago, sent it out on a cassette, and somehow rewired what indie rock was allowed to sound like. Then ten years later you make a record that does not sound exactly like the record you made at twenty-four, and a twenty-two-year-old at Pitchfork named Matt LeMay decides to give the whole thing a zero. Not a one. Not a two. A zero point zero. Easy to say from the press box.

Let me explain what a 0.0 actually means. A 0.0 means the album has no value. It means it should not exist. It means every musician on it, every engineer, every backup vocalist, every tea-fetcher in the studio wasted their afternoon. A 0.0 is the score you give a stranger's voicemail. It is not criticism. It is a press release for the critic's own ego, dressed up in pull-quotes about Matador and authenticity. LeMay did not write a review. He held a public execution and made sure his indie laminate stayed pinned to his lapel.

Here is what hit pieces are actually about. They are never about the album. They are about the critic. LeMay needed Liz Phair to fail because if a Matador-era hero went pop and SUCCEEDED, his entire worldview — that there is a sacred indie line, and that crossing it is moral cowardice — collapses on contact. So he did not review the record. He punished her for refusing to live in the diorama he built for her in his college dorm. Meanwhile 'Why Can't I?' walked into the Billboard top 40 and stayed there for months. Real listeners shrugged and bought the CD. The only person devastated by Liz Phair's career was Matt LeMay.

I am not telling you the album was a masterpiece. I am telling you a 0.0 is the rating you hand out when you decided to hate something before the disc finished loading. Liz Phair made a record. Matt LeMay made a statement. Twenty-three years later we still know exactly which one of those two had anything left to say.