The Remarkable Story of Liz Phair's 'Girly-Sound' Tapes

Tae Won Yu received a cassette tape in the mail. It was 1991, an era when bootlegs flowed freely through the postal service like pollen in springtime. Vanilla Ice had the top-selling album in America, and Nirvana was months away from breaking through to the mainstream, but the underground scene was vibrant. Yu, then the guitarist for a rock duo called Kicking Giant, frequently received homemade tapes in the mail from musicians in the indie-fanzine world: Bratmobile. Bikini Kill. Daniel Johnston.

This particular cassette was special. The songs, bracing and raw, had been recorded at home by Yu's friend, an unknown 23-year-old songwriter named Liz Phair. "It was astounding, and fully formed—both the sound and the ease of her lyrical dexterity," said Yu. "I felt very lucky, and also very jealous of my friend, who was such an accomplished songwriter."

Pretty soon, on the strength of that tape and several others, Phair would be a rising star, and then a Gen-X icon.

For more than 25 years, Phair's early tapes, recorded under the name Girly-Sound and commonly known as the Girly-Sound tapes, have circulated among fans, first in analog form and then as digital files, amassing a reputation as the holy grail of alternative-era bootlegs. Exile in Guyville, Phair's 1993 debut, is widely hailed as her masterpiece, but those tapes introduced its most crucial songs and provided the crude road map for her career. Now, after decades of semi-legitimate circulation and word-of-mouth mythology, the complete tapes have been commercially released for the first time, compiled in Girly-Sound to Guyville, a boxed set honoring the 25th anniversary of Exile in Guyville.

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