Gay4Grunge: Hole

Hole may be the most controversial Grunge band for the simple reason that Courtney Love is one of the most controversial figures ever in pop culture history.  Few people have been as demonized as much as Courtney Love, who seems to be used as a scapegoat for the media & press whenever it's convenient. Her marriage to Kurt Cobain is what initially brought her mainstream attention and it was negative right from the start. Once Kurt died and Courtney released Hole's sophomore album Live Through This in the same week, the hatters went into overdrive claiming she had killed Kurt and that she had planned it all for the release of her album. No matter what Courtney does it seems like she can never win in the eyes of the media and that's because she dares to be a rockstar the same way men are rockstars and that is still totally unacceptable in our culture. 

Grunge and the ensuing Alternative Nation that sprang up around it in 1991/1992, promised us a much different rock landscape than the one we had been used to for so long. Not only was rock now gonna be more honest and rawer than what we had had in the mainstream before, it also promised a place for women in rock. Historically rock and roll has been very much a boys club despite a few exceptional female rockers who managed to break through between the late 60s and late 80s. There's no denying that the 90s saw an influx of female artists within Rock and Alternative who broke the mold and gained mainstream success in ways that seemed impossible before. All of a sudden, artists like Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Julinana Hatfield, Tori Amos & Bjork were getting attention & praise from MTV and the rock press while female fronted rock bands such as The Cranberries, Belly, The Breeders, Letters to Cleo, Veruca Salt, Garbage and more started flooding MTV and rock radio in record numbers. Many of these female artists spoke more openly about sex and their desires, which was honestly thanks to Madonna, who truly opened the doors for more female artists to be more sexually liberated. Other female artists sang about the terrors of the patriarchy and its abuse against women or they sang about topics that didn't involve love and relationships. 

In the 90s topics which had been taboo for female artists to sing about were now being welcomed, but the double standard women faced still existed, it just changed its stripes a bit for the 90s. Hole for me is the one of the most fascinating examples of a female act that could have only come to prominence during the 90s, but still got raked over the coals anyway.  At no other point would a mostly female fronted rock band this messy, loud and angry be played all over rock radio and MTV and yet maybe due to their large mass media exposure, people found the band (really Courtney) to be evil incarnate. Most of the insults flung at Courtney were that she was a careerist, she was a drug addict, she was a narcissist, she dressed shabbily, she had no filter, she was rude, lewd and crude. Oh, and she was also a terrible mother too thanks to the 1992 article from Vanity Fair. 

Basically, Courtney was all the things Kurt Cobain was, but Kurt was a man so he was held to a much different standard. Kurt did just as many drugs, dressed sloppily, had no filter, would tell off people in person or in interviews, actually wanted success and played the game despite always complaining about it, wrote mostly about himself in all of Nirvana's music and he was also a parent who left his child behind when he killed himself. Kurt & Courtney were two peas in a pod and yet Kurt's behavior is celebrated, even today, as the mark of a true rockstar and legend who broke all the rules and he will be eternally cool because of it. Courtney on the other hand is seen as just a hot mess who represents everything that is wrong with our culture according to not just the media but even fans of Nirvana and Grunge itself. All Courtney did was act like all the male rock stars around her and yet she's the evilest person of that era because she was a woman.

Now I'm not saying that Courtney Love is a saint mind you and that she hasn't done some questionable things, but it's funny how she gets shit while Kurt and other male rock artists don't even get a fraction of the vitriol that Courtney has received throughout her entire career. Growing up I didn't know who Hole was initially, but Courtney Love's name did get bounced around enough that I was aware that she existed and that apparently, she was very controversial. My earliest memory of Hole and their music comes from Beavis & Butthead watching the music video to Violet, which I'm sure you are starting to notice was my gateway show into Grunge & 90s Alternative in the late '90s. Beavis & Butthead's commentary was mostly just talking about sex and calling Courtney a slut though they found that to actually be cool. Later on in the movie Beavis & Butthead Do America, Beavis askes Butthead if Seattle is in Washington DC and of course Butthead says yes which prompts Beavis to say "Coo!! Maybe later we could go see Hole!" So, it's clear Beavis and Butthead were Hole fans. 

Still, I wouldn't get into Hole's music until the fall of 1998 when the lead single to Hole's new album Celebrity Skin was released. I remember first seeing the music video for Celebrity Skin and being taken back by how polished and poppy it was. I wasn't too familiar with Hole's music yet, but this looked and sounded a lot different from the music video to Violet that I had seen on Beavis & Butthead. As a young gay boy, I was drawn to the glitz and glamour of Celebrity Skin music video and the song itself was rocking yet catchy with pristine production gloss. For someone like me who loved fabulous female pop divas like Madonna or Janet, Hole's glam makeover was very appealing to me. I soon became enamored with Celebrity Skin to the point that I tapped the music video off MTV one morning before school. I also wanted to tape the song off the radio, because it was 1998 and I was in middle school with little disposable income. Back then tapping a song you liked off the radio was the easiest way to own the song without spending money on it. So, I called the local rock station one morning before school and the DJ told me that the song would be played around 7pm that night if I wanted to catch it. Now I've requested a lot of songs on the radio during my early years of music fandom and that was the only time a DJ told me when a song would be played so I didn't have to wait all day for it by listening to the radio.  

As much as I loved the song Celebrity Skin, the album's next single Malibu would win me over even more. Malibu sounds like it's inspired by the 70s pop/rock of Fleetwood Mac and America, which is not surprising because Courtney Love is a big Fleetwood Mac fan. As I said earlier there were not too many women in rock and roll before the 90s, but Fleetwood Mac was one of the big exceptions as it had two female singer/songwriters in the group so it's not surprising that Courtney would look up to them. Malibu is a perfect sun kissed summer pop song and the more I heard it the more I fell in love with it. Now that the album had two singles I loved, it was time to purchase the album and I bought it at the same place I bought Version 2.0 by Garbage. In fact, I may have bought Celebrity Skin and Version 2.0 together but I'm not 100% sure on that. Still, I know I got into both groups around the same time and I enjoyed hearing Alternative Rock that had female singers, which were becoming increasingly rare as we approached the end of the 90s. I also have a very specific memory of a rare lightning storm happening in California where I sat on top of my desk next to the window and watched all the lightning while listening to the Celebrity Skin album. 

Now Hole was all over MTV around that time. On top of their music videos, the group performed at the 1998 VMAS, appeared on TRL a few times & they had a contest for fans to live like a rock star for the day and meet the band. It was clear at that point that Courtney was loving her new glam era and MTV loved putting her on air, because it was also going to be entertaining content no matter what. The third single off the album was Awful and despite its title it was any but. Awful sounded like a sequel to Malibu and I had no problems with that. Still the album did run out of steam by the summer of 1999 and that's probably due to the fact that by then teen pop and Nu-Metal were overtaking MTV and most of the Grunge and Alternative bands left were quickly getting pushed off MTV and radio. Hole did a song for the soundtrack to the movie Any Given Sunday in early 2000, but I don't remember hearing that song on the radio nor seeing the video on MTV. Not too long after that Hole announced they were breaking up and with that announcement another 90s Alternative Rock band had bitten the dust. 

It wouldn't take me long to circle back to Hole though once Grunge took hold of me in 2002. That said, I stuck mostly with the Celebrity Skin at first as that was still their most accessible album, but I soon dipped my toes into Live Through This. Live Through This is an album I've lived with since the early 00s, but I appreciate it and respect it more now than I did 20 years ago. When I first heard Live Through This, I didn't quite appreciate what a feminist statement the album really was. Live Through This definitely felt angrier and more righteous than Celebrity Skin and the ghost of Kurt Cobain definitely seemed to haunt it, but I wasn't really processing the lyrics at first. As the years have gone on and I've become more aware of the damaging effects of the Patriarchy and how it mistreats women especially, I have begun to understand what Courtney Love is saying on Live Through This more and more with each passing year.   

On Live Through This we hear about how men abuse women because they can. How men only look at women's bodies and don't care about the person inside. How men lust after women, but then throw them in the trash after they've had their fun with them. How men commit acts of violence against women and don't think twice about it.  At the time many people felt Live Through This was a spooky title that referred to Courtney having to live through Kurt's suicide and some people still do, but what the album title really means to me is trying to live in this world as a woman, because it's not easy no matter what you do. I remember taking a course in college called Women in Pop Music and in one of our lessons we learned about Janis Joplin and Karen Carpenter together. The reason being that they are considered to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Karen is the good girl who sang very mellow pop songs that were a bit square for the time whereas Janis Joplin was a rock and roller who sang with a bluesy rasp and was usually backed by a messy rock and roll band. And yet in the end they both died tragically before their time by an industry that chews artists up and spits them out. Yet, the other lesson was how no matter if women fought the patriarchy or tried to live by it they would still be constantly critiqued and criticized no matter what. Janis and Karen both tried to live up to their roles as the bad girl and the good girl but in the end, it ended up killing both of them. 

Courtney in a lot of ways was the bad girl of 90s Alternative and she received lots of backlash for it, but even when she went more glam in the late 90s it didn't stop people from saying terrible things about her. Plus, she even angered some former fans and reviewers who called her a sellout in the late '90s after Celebrity Skin. No matter what Courtney does she will be hated for it. Of course, Courtney didn't help her cause in the 00s due to a few different factors. First was the lawsuit over Nirvana's music that pitted her against Krist Novaselic and Dave Grohl that dragged out during the early 00s. Kirst and Dave wanted to just release all of Nirvana's unreleased music in a giant box set, but Courtney wanted to not only put out a Greatest Hits first, but she wanted that Greatest Hits to have the song You Know You're Right on it too, since it was the last song Nirvana recorded. Courtney knew that You Know You're Right was a huge hit waiting to happen and she didn't want it lost in the shuffle of a box set that was mostly just demos and B-sides. 

Courtney looked like the bad party in all of this, because it made it look like Courtney wanted to make more money off her dead husband while Krist and Dave just wanted the fans to hear all the music and not have to wait for it. In the end an agreement was made for a Greatest Hits to come out first with You Know You're Right as the lead single and then a few years afterwards everything could be released in a giant box set. While Courtney may have looked greedy in all of this, she ended up being right in the end because You Know You're Right did become a huge hit and the Greatest Hits entered the charts at #3 and has sold over 2 million copies to date. It worked on me as well, because I too bought that Greatest Hits the day it came out. 

After the Nirvana legal battle was settled, Courtney turned her attention back to music, but with Hole already broken up Courtney decided to release her first official solo record instead. The title of her solo album was America's Sweetheart, which of course was Courtney's way of acknowledging her public persona and all the flak she has received over the years. The first single Mono became a minor Alternative rock radio hit, but I barely remember hearing it on the radio in 2004. The music video got a few spins from Vh1 of all places but hey by 2004 the Alternative Nation was getting older and MTV was geared towards Millennials and reality TV shows by then. Courtney has distanced herself from this solo album in recent years and most Hole fans pretend it doesn't exist. I eventually listened to the whole album years later in the late 2010s and I can tell you that it's not awful, it's just forgettable. All the songs kind of blur together and it's hard to remember any kind of melody or hook after you're done listening to it. Like Hole's first album Pretty on the Inside, America's Sweetheart is for diehard fans only. Also, I have not discussed 1991's Pretty on the Inside, because I can't really listen to it. It's an all-out Riot Grrrl record filled with tons of angst and screaming, but Pretty On the Inside has absolutely zero hooks or melodies to latch onto. If you know me, I can do heavy sludgy rock music, but I still need some kind of hook or melody to grab my attention. Pretty On the Inside refuses to be melodic at all points so that's why I'm not a fan and I don't have much else to say about it. 

As the 2000s went on Courtney remained a staple of gossip columns and magazines, but it was for all the wrong reasons. Besides America's Sweetheart, which had been a flop, Courtney didn't release any other music during the 00s so she was now becoming even more known for being Kurt's widow and for being a hot mess in general. Courtney still gave good interview when she wanted to, but she had no new material to promote so it was easy for music fans, even fans of Hole in general, to ignore her during the 00s. 

By 2010 Courtney was finally ready to release new music and it was set to be another solo album. Still, due to the flop of America's Sweetheart someone must have realized that the new record would have much more cache if it was simply titled Hole instead. Now make no mistake, Hole had always been Courtney's band right from the start and there have been various different band members in Hole throughout the 90s, but Hole at least always sounded like a band. Plus, former members such as Eric Erlandson and Melissa Auf der Maur did add a lot to the band's sound, especially on Celebrity Skin. Still people were more likely to buy a new Hole album than a solo Courtney Love record, therefore Nobody's Daughter was released in early 2010 under the Hole moniker and guess what I bought it. If Nobody's Daughter had been another Courtney Love solo album, I probably would have skipped it, but because it said Hole, I decided to give it a go. So, props to whoever decided it should be a Hole album because it worked on me. 

I remember the Hole album came out right around the same time the new Stone Temple Pilots album came out and I ended up buying both together at the same time. Needless to say, between the two albums the Stone Temple Pilots album was definitely better, but Hole's album had a few keepers such as the lead single Skinny Little Bitch. This song definitely felt like it was the closest to old school Hole as it featured a nasty guitar riff and even nastier lyrics, which sees Courtney taking stock of all the newer girls who were making the tabloids back then such as Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan. Skinny Little Bitch became a top 20 Alternative hit and I remember hearing the song on my local alternative rock radio station in Rhode Island 955 WBRU. I also dug the song Samantha, mostly because the part where Courtney sings "F*ck people like you who f*ck people like me." That's classic Courtney in my opinion but outside of that and Skinny Little Bitch I didn't really grow attached to any other songs off Nobody's Daughter. Around that time Courtney Love did a Behind the Music, which she criticized the moment it came out, and she did a few TV appearances performing Skinny Little Bitch, but the album stalled quickly and it seemed like Courtney retreated from making music. Over the past decade the only new music we've seen from Courtney were a few contributions to the Empire soundtrack and the song Mother to the Turning soundtrack in 2020, but that's about it. 

Still while Courtney's public persona continued to overshadow her music career, Hole's music has gathered a small but strong cult following over the years, mostly from girls and gays who find Courtney to be a true music pioneer. When I saw Kim Petras for a second time live, I remember waiting in line with a girl who I struck up a conversation with. She and I discussed pop divas like Britney, Gaga and Kesha and when I mentioned I was also a big fan of Grunge and 90s Alternative she said she was a huge fan of Hole. She loved how saucy and unfiltered Courtney was and that Hole was definitely her favorite band from the era of Alternative Rock. Meanwhile on Twitter I have noticed a few queer music fans have mentioned Hole. Many of the gays find her music to be so raw and passionate that they are still impressed with it despite the music being almost 30 years old. One queer person on Twitter in particular said Doll Parts was the most emotionally raw song that they had ever heard.

Meanwhile some queer artists such as J grgry and Tove Lo have mentioned how influenced they are by Hole and their music, especially with how honest, raw and dark it is. Tove Lo says that while her music is sonically different from Hole, she tries to replicate the honesty and darkness found in Hole's records in her own music. Even Pitchfork, in an article about the best albums of 1998 that had Celebrity Skin on the list, said that the cult of Courtney has only grown in the years since Hole initially broke up. It shows that while there are more female artists than ever before in pop music, there still isn't anyone like Hole or Courtney Love, which is why she and her music continue to endure despite all the naysayers. There's a power to Hole's records that remains untouched 3 decades later. If anything, albums like Live Through This have become even more resonant after #metoo and the current laws trying to restrict women from having full autonomy over their own bodies. Courtney wanted to be a rock star, but she also attacked the patriarchy whenever she could on record and it turns out that she was pretty much right about that the entire time. Tune in next week when I go even deeper into Hole's music as I countdown my top 15 Hole songs.