Courtney Love
After more than 20 years, Courtney Love is readying her long-awaited second solo album, and ber own admission, it’s shaping up to be an eclectic release.
Having released America’s Sweetheart in February 2004 following the breakup of Hole two years prior, Love’s debut record didn’t set the world ablaze, only hitting No. 53 on the Billboard 200 upon its arrival. However, in the ensuing decades, she’s experienced something of a career renaissance, having released a new album with Hole in 2010, and promising the release of her forthcoming memoir, Girl with the Most Cake, after a decade of writing.
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Another project which appears to be on the way is her second solo album, which had been teased for a late 2023 release, but never eventuated. It’s a far more promising update than 2013’s news that a record tentatively titled Died Blonde would arrive early the following year.
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In a new interview with The Standard, however, Love has opened up about her new record and talking about the artists who will be guesting along the way – just don’t call anything made with another artist a ‘collab’.
“I don’t do ‘collabs’ – man, I hate that word! However, I have co-written songs with some people on this album,” she explained. “[R.E.M.’s Michael] Stipe mentioned our collaboration to The New York Times, so I can say it’s gorgeous.
“I fell down weeping hearing his voice – it’s better than ever! I thought I knew the outcome, but I’m still the grasshopper while Michael is the sensei. There are others I can’t mention; I didn’t intend for any collaborations.”
Love also confirmed that Echo & the Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant has contributed to her new record, calling his involvement a “miracle”.
“Will Sergeant, my favourite guitarist on earth, from my favourite band agreed to work with me!” she enthused. “My goodness, when he returned from LA for our first song together, I nearly fainted—he’s such an icon! If you lined up Jimmy Page, Jonny Greenwood, and Will Sergeant, I’d pick Sergeant every time; it’s insane! He’s on this album and elevating songs beyond description.”
Elsehwere, Love also namechecked a number of contemporary artists she is fond of, citing a desire to work with Kendrick Lamar (“I have a mad crush on him,” she admits), and a love of Stormzy and Doja Cat.
“I’d love to co-write a song with Lana Del Rey – I’d like to be ‘Paul’ and go hard on choruses while going back to Norman and go hard on choruses, or whatever,” Love explained. “She’s currently on her honeymoon; I’m very happy for her.
“But every time some kid asks me to ‘collab’ with Lana – I mean come on!” she added. “Can you stop saying ‘collab’ to someone who straddles Gen X and boomer? We don’t do that! Call it ‘writing a song together,’ not ‘featuring.’ It makes me lose my temper and makes it the last thing I want to do. I love Lorde too.”
However, one artist who has apparently fallen out of favor with Love is English musician PJ Harvey. In an earlier interview with The Standard in April, Love namechecked Harvey as a female artist she’s fond of, alongside Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Julie London, and early Joni Mitchell.
While noting in the same interview she’d begun growing tired of Lana Del Rey, Love cited Harvey’s “first four albums” as her favorite period of the musician’s discography. Now, Love has apparently turned against Harvey.
“I did ask PJ Harvey to come back – I wanted just one of her great iconic Stones guitar riffs,” she told The Standard. “We have a relationship; I’ve endorsed her over the decades, but she chose not to respond to me. So I wrote her about how f***ing rude that was.
“Her manager tried to smooth things over, but it’s not okay – she hasn’t played rock music in 100 years!” she added. “Her first five albums are great; after that, she ventured into art space (though I do love ‘The Last Living Rose,’ which feels like a John Donne poem with… WTF? A tuba?).”
Love’s forthcoming album is yet to receive an official release date.
Courtney Love was almost Fight Club‘s Marla Singer before the role eventually went to Helena Bonham Carter, but the “Hole” frontwoman revealed that a tense conversation with the 1999 film’s star Brad Pitt led to her losing the role.
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While joining Marc Maron for an interview on his WTF podcast, Love claimed that she “went nuclear” on Pitt after the actor director Gus Van Sant pitched a Kurt Cobain movie to her. “I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt,” she said. “I went nuclear. I don’t do Faust. Who the f— do you think are?”
She added that she told Pitt, “I don’t know if I trust you and I don’t know that your movies are for profit. They’re really good social justice movies, but… if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad.”
Love, who married the Nirvana frontman in 1992 and was with him until his death at age 27 in 1994, revealed that after that conversation, she was fired from Fight Club. Pitt’s co-star Edward Norton, who was Love’s romantic partner at the time, was the one who told her the news. “He starts sobbing,” Love recalled. “And he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!’”
Van Sant went on to helm the Michael Pitt-starring Last Days, which was inspired by Cobain — but Love said the film wasn’t the one that was discussed in the fateful meeting.
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