The one album Adam Sandler would listen to forever: “Ooh, that was nasty”
Adam Sandler might not be the first name that comes to mind when you think of 1990s grunge. With his trademark baggy basketball gear and a history of comedy raps – including a whole bit about losing his phone, wallet, and keys – the actor gives off more hip-hop fan energy than Seattle rock devotee. But appearances can be misleading, and when it comes to music, Sandler’s heart belongs to the fuzzed-out angst of grunge.
That’s if his choice of a favourite album is anything to go by, a 1994 female-led blast of heavy rock that caused controversy on release but has since gone down as a modern classic.
In conversation alongside George Clooney with NME for his new film Jay Kelly, Sandler revealed: “You know what entire album I listened to? No problem. Hole, Live Through This. I remember I was on tour. I was doing standup and uh that album just came out and I was in my car a lot and I listened to the track one and I was like, ‘Ooh, that was Nasty’. Track two, I was like, ‘two for two.’ And then I just said, ‘I guess this whole album is going to be great.’”
Hole, who were led by Courtney Love, were at the time often unfairly derided as a vanity project, but the truth was they had tunes that were far better than most bands around in the grunge era and produced two albums in Live Through This and Celebrity Skin that rank alongside almost any album released by guitar bands in the 1990s.
Love was a fearsome and talented frontwoman and songwriter, blending literary references with acid-tongued rebuttals of the Yoko Ono-esque criticism that was flung at her during the ascent of Nirvana and her relationship with Kurt Cobain. Live Through This was titled almost as a reminder to herself, and even though the album went platinum, there were still those who tried to put it out there that Cobain wrote the songs, possibly not helped by his appearance on two songs to provide backing vocals.
Hole had been known as a hardcore band for the previous couple of years, and Live Through This was an intentional shift by Love toward a more commercially accessible, melodic record, with her stated influences including the Pixies and Echo and the Bunnymen.
While Sandler picked Hole, Clooney’s choice of a favourite album was far more traditional, as he plumped for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band from 1967. He said, “There’s not a bad track on it. The way we thought about things changed and the music changed.”
Jay Kelly, which was released last month, stars the pair as an actor and agent travelling around Europe, reflecting on their lives back home in the US. It is directed by Noah Baumbach, the man behind movies like 2019’s Marriage Story and a frequent collaborator with Wes Anderson and Greta Gerwig, with whom he wrote 2023’s global smash Barbie.
As for Hole, Courtney Love officially retired the band back in 2013 after a four-year reunion, after which she did some solo performances. There were rumoured reformations in both 2014 and 2019, when the band did rehearse together, but Love moved to the UK, which curtailed any further shows.
