The album Courtney Love calls “one of my life’s great shames”
Courtney Love has lived quite a life. An icon of grunge as the frontwoman of Hole and the wife of Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain, from the music to her off-stage controversies, Love’s story is a compelling one.
Whilst her detractors tend to concentrate on what they see as her personality defects, this unfair judgement of her character has detracted from the reality that, musically, she’s one of the best of her generation. The author of classics such as ‘Violet’, ‘Malibu’ and the timeless ‘Celebrity Skin’ proves Love is more talented than many give her credit for. A strong voice for female artists in a male-dominated industry, Love is artistically and symbolically significant in contemporary culture.
It says all about the gravity of her talent that Love claimed to have written one of Hole’s signature songs, ‘Doll Parts’, in just 20 minutes. Written about the formative chapter of her relationship with Cobain, the track was fuelled by lust and anger. “Good songs don’t always come in 20 minutes, but the force was strong, and that one did,” Love once explained, “Anyway, I married that guy”.
As Love alluded, the songwriting process doesn’t always go how a musician wants it to. This is something she knows all too well, and it became particularly apparent when she was working on her 2004 debut album, America’s Sweetheart, a record she has been more than damning about. Underpinned by the traditional trappings of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, in the years since it was released, the Hole frontwoman has decried the body of work, listing what she views as its most egregious shortcomings.
According to Loudwire, in a post on her since-deleted Instagram page, Love posted a photograph of her car in Australia with a paint job echoing the cover art from America’s Sweetheart. The parallels between the two images caused Love to reflect on her only solo effort in the caption. She wasn’t in a forgiving mood, though, and called it “one of my life’s great shames”. Love also included a not-so-subtle dig at one of her former romantic interests: I’m Alan Partridge star Steve Coogan.
“Maybe one day I won’t hate that record. It has some good songs. But like Steve Coogan, or crack, it’s one of my life’s great shames,” Love said. “Just the period, sloppiness, men, money, drugs, nightmare…. although Chateau Miraval (where we made it) doesn’t suck.”
Listen to America’s Sweetheart below.
