spirit – just get out there and don't watch out for yourself – and I think it's a very unhealthy attitude to assume that you're not in business when you actually are." Recording Phair worked with several producers, including Michael Penn, who had worked with acts including Aimee Mann and the Wallflowers. Phair and Penn worked in the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles. Phair said in October 2001, "He places me in it so beautifully. He'll do things like get an industrial sound and replace it for a snare drum. It's one of the most intense-sounding things I've ever done." The collaboration with Penn ended as, according to Phair, "He tended to like my more serious stuff and he wouldn't let me make a fool of myself, and I really needed to make a little bit of a fool of myself." Searching for "more spontaneous stuff", Phair recruited the Matrix songwriting and production team, who had created songs for pop acts including Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Ricky Martin and Avril Lavigne. Phair said she was envious of Lavigne's 2002 song "Complicated", and said: "How come I don't ever get to make songs that are blasted out of cars? That's one of the things I've always done my whole life is drive fast and play music loud." The Matrix wrote and produced four songs with Phair: "Extraordinary", "Why Can't I?", "Rock Me" and "Favorite". Phair said they pushed her to sing different kinds of melodies: "It's top-of-the-line song structure, and it was really exciting to graft my DNA with theirs and to see what we came up with." Other tracks were produced by Penn, Pete Yorn and Yorn's producer R. Walt Vincent. Phair deliberated over whether to include the song "HWC", which stands for "hot white cum". She said she wrote it "completely sincerely ... I'm talking about being in love and having great sex." She said her female friends loved the song, but that "grown men had a lot of problems with it". Reception Liz Phair debuted at #27 on the Billboard 200. The single "Why Can't I?" entered the Adult Top 40 and Hot Adult Contemporary charts, and its music video placed Phair in heavy rotation on VH1 for the first time. By July 2010, Liz Phair had sold 433,000 copies. It was certified gold in the United States on May 14, 2018, for sales of 500,000