In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Liz Phair '89 reflects on the making of "Exile in Guyville," her debut album released 30 years ago. Phair goes into detail about her time at Oberlin in the late '80s, describing how her Oberlin education informed her artistry:
“I was in a different scene than I actually was as an artist, and I had gone to a school, Oberlin College in Ohio, it's a school that has both a liberal arts side and a music conservatory side, very seriously, super-trained, very organized, you know, students who were serious about becoming orchestral musicians.
“So we had that on campus, but then you had the scruffy-haired slacker people like me that were taking humanities classes. And everybody had a band because of this. And so I saw people who were not that good getting up on stage and just thrashing it out. So it gave me kind of permission — I'd taken piano, I'd taken guitar, but I wanted to write my own music, I wanted to express myself. So I think that was wha...