The album Courtney Love said “sucked beyond words”
Former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love is a polarising figure. Ultimately, much of this can be attributed to her position as the wife of the late Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain, with many disliking Love purely for their union. Compounding this sentiment, a portion of these detractors do so because of a string of nefarious, unfounded claims about her role in Cobain’s death, which has been the source of fierce debate online for an age now.
In reality, since before Cobain’s passing in 1994, Love hasn’t helped herself. The singer has been embroiled in a host of very public spats, arguments which have only served to crystallise her polarising character. Whether it be her allegations about ex-lover Steve Coogan’s role in Owen Wilson’s downward spiral or her tense public battle with the Osbornes, Love is well-versed in controversy.
In fact, she is so detested by the Osbornes that the matriarch of the family – Sharon – once said of her: “I’m glad [Courtney Love] doesn’t like me. I only pity her. She’s a virus. I don’t want her anywhere near people I love. The cold hard fact is she’s a has-been.”
Due to the malign character that she is often afforded, commentators tend to forget that, before all else, Love is genuinely a musician of merit. Some of her works are worthy of such great praise that there’s even an argument to be had that Hole is just as good – if not better – as Nirvana.
Hole released four albums in their time. Together, they marked their arrival with the 1991 grunge classic Pretty On The Inside and then delivered the more robust bodies of work 1994’s Live Through This and 1998’s Celebrity Skin before they called it a day in 2002. The band reunited for a brief flourish between 2009 and 2012, releasing their final album, Nobody’s Daughter, in 2010. Going toe to toe with the male outfits of their era, Hole significantly and positively impacted contemporary music culture, with the likes of Sky Ferreira and Lana Del Rey citing Love and the band as a defining influence.
One of Love’s most prominent disciples is Victoria Legrand, frontwoman of the Baltimore dream pop outfit Beach House. When sitting down with the Broken Record Podcast earlier this year, Legrand made her thoughts clear on the matter. “Her screaming, her voice,” she said. “There’s just a unique quality to it. Also, the music. The songs were really great. The songwriting is incredible. You know, Live Through This is an incredible record. People are gonna copy that for the rest of time.”
Despite Love’s work with Hole being critically and commercially successful, her first record without the band, 2004’s America’s Sweetheart, is not. The project is widely regarded as a blight on her otherwise glittering CV, and because of this, the material remains her only solo album to date.
A highly controversial body of work, America’s Sweetheart has been dismissed as a complete disaster due to the “coked out” state Love was in at the time, where she was more concerned with taking drugs than making music. Whilst many heavily criticise the album, none have been more damning of it than its author. “The sound sucked beyond words,” she declared in 2006, before adding that it was a total “mistake” and “really crap”.
