A Year of Blind Spots: Celebrity Skin

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die:

When she dies in the bathtub, who doesn't shed a tear? Courtney Love is fabulous in The People Vs. Larry Flynt, a celluloid signal that her post-Cobain years might not be all flings and fisticuffs ("Hole is a band," huffed Rolling Stone, "Courtney Love is a soap opera").

The musical legacy of her mid-1990s Hollywood heyday is Celebrity Skin. From the whoosh that opens the title cut, it is a whirlwind ride into a post-grunge Oz. Courtney is half Dorothy, half Wicked Witch, alternately blessing and blasting those who cross her.

As the words skip between sunshine and shade, Eric Erlandson's guitar jangles and jabs, Melissa Auf Der Maur's bass rumbles and rolls, and Patty Schemel's drums smack and crash. Above it all soars the voice of Love, who roars where once she screamed. Also key are co-writers Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Jordan Zaroronzny of Blinker the Star, and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's—and producer Michael Beinhorn.

There is plenty for armchair detectives: "Boys on the Radio" is about Jeff Buckley, Brian Wilson, and the Lemonheads' Evan Dando, "Awful" is Bush's Gavin Rossdale, "Northern Star" is probably Cobain, and "Playing Your Song" fits Trent Reznor like a gothic glove.

Gossip aside, Celebrity Skin is a misunderstood, melodic masterpiece. "I was very disappointed for her that people didn't get behind that record" lamented Love's muse Stevie Nicks. The album takes the same sonic leap from 1994's Live Through This as that crunching classic did from 1991's synapse-shredding Pretty on the Inside—and thus completes a Hole hat trick of classic albums.

Joe:

Certain key questions arise when listening to an album for the first time, questions whose answer will provide what you need to know about the story of the band. The questions will look different to everybody. E.g. when we were listening to this song at home, Pam was like "I think one of these songs was in a '90s rom-com," which is probably right, and most definitely important to Pam's understanding of the music as it fits into pop culture. But my question was "I wonder if this came out before or after Live Through This?"

Because we covered that album in this column over five years ago at this point, and it's probably one of my favorite Blind Spot albums ever, and this one is even better, in the way that it sounds waaaay more pop-like than the grunge album I fell in love with previously. So my question would provide the answer of which direction Hole traveled in? Did they get grungier through Love's love of Kurt Cobain and reach grunge catharsis around the time of his suicide, OR did they find the peak of grunge and move past it, into the upper reaches of mainstream rock, by writing hooks that could find themselves into any number of styles of pop songs?

The answer is the latter, obviously, if you took like two seconds to read the blurb above or the Wikipedia page or whatever. That makes the most sense anyway. It's more common to become more accessible as time goes on. And it makes sense that Hole would take their sound in that direction in 1997, which was past grunge's peak anyway. I like the fact that it was done on purpose, that Hole had a vision for this album and that vision had everything to do with being boldly accessible and catchy.

The title track is recognizable from '90s rock radio. I didn't recognize anything else—which is a good thing, as always in this column, to not be distracted by ubiquitous hit songs of yesteryear—but I fell in love with "Awful." I think the chorus on this one will be burned into my brain forever. I really liked the aforementioned "Boys on the Radio" too, felt like a grunge-fringe version of jangle pop, like a dark mirror version of something that R.E.M. would have been putting out around the same time.

Why did Hole remain such a blind spot, after all this time? I think the RS quote in the blurb above hints at the reason—women in rock 'n' roll are taken less seriously than men. Which is fucked up. But I will cop to the fact that I have been raised in my rock 'n' roll education to know Courtney Love as a slightly unhinged woman who was Kurt Cobain's widow and who has loud opinions. "Frontwoman of Hole" almost seemed like a footnote. It's fucked that it took multiple efforts in a dumb blog column to understand what a formidable musician Love was and is, and how the main story here is that her band kicked fucking ass. Who gives a shit what "celebrity tabloids" are (still) saying about her. It's all about the music, and the music is incredible. If Live Through This is one of the best grunge rock albums of the '90s, then Celebrity Skin is surely one of the greatest rock albums of that decade, period.

Listen to the entire thing here:

(P.S. I cannot fucking BELIEVE that the 1001 Albums blurb spoiled a Film Club movie for me. What the fuck!!)