why do people on ILM hate "live through this" ?

98. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
It's just got better songs.

97. Blur - Parklife
Again, better songs.

96. Orbital - Snivilisation
Do I need a reason?

95. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works II
Please!

94. Oasis - Definitely Maybe
Even this is better than "Live Through This"

93. Nirvana - Unplugged
Why would you even want a Hole album if you already have Nirvana records?

This took me two minutes to write.

I can't stand it, I must admit. Basically b/c when I listen to it, it makes me feel unhappy.

I have never heard LTT.

These people were called "the sane". "Celebrity Skin" is a better album, Courtney is a lot better at "rocking" than "rock", but as a selection of singles, the idea that Nirvana have three songs to match "Violet", "Miss World", and "Doll Parts" (not to mention "Rock Star") is, frankly, dumb.

so you were there? give me a break. surely Kurt had something to do with it. he was a miserable twat long before he met Courtney, long before he was famous.

I like his music though.

I've never heard the album, obv., but all of the singles were pretty awesome.

Cos the bands sounds similar in mmany ways and it's rumoured Kurt wrote chunks of the album.

They were. No fucking comparison. Courtney was a much better singer and much better songwriter for one, I mean two, things.

addendum to my previous post:

(Either that, or Kurdt just gave most of his best songwriting to Courtney. Even after was dead.) (Unless Billy Corgan and Jordan Zadarozny etc. just gave Courtney all of THEIR best songwriting then.)

What I don't get, and I'll probably get crucified for this, is the hate for Arrested Development's 3 Years. . . I think it's really interesting and enjoyable.

Nirvana had a HACK drummer. But the guitar player was good.

Most under-acclaimed song on LTT, BTW: "Jennifer's Body."

On which songs does she demonstrate that she was a better songwriter, Chuck?

(This thread got me looking for this album for the first time in years but I don't seem to have it anymore. I'll see if I can find a copy.)

I have no idea who wrote what songs, Frank E, and neither do you. "Doll Parts" and "Violet" and "Malibu" and "Jennifer's Body" and "Mono" are as good or better than anything Cobain ever wrote.

xpost: Admittedly I haven't heard much of anything post- or pre-LTT aside from the odd single.

Look, I don't usually let myself get carried away on these stupid threads, but your insinuations are incredibly fucking sexist and ignorant and I wish to God you'd shut the fuck up. This is so insulting across the fucking board.

Except when it was just cleverly-or-not-so skewed powerpop.

yes! and that is when he *ruled*!!

Really? Like how you think her "husband or boyfriend or fuck buddy" wrote her songs? Read between the lines.

You might as well say it's not important who produced the record, or who played guitar on it. Sure, they're still *her* songs no matter who twiddles the knobs on the soundboard, but it's still a crucial element of creating the record.
(lotsa xposts)

Haha, Chuck, you got some competition on that front!!! ;)

Don't go telling me she's a great songwriter then...

If I say that Elvis' songs were written by a lot of black people, am I being anti-white?

Joan Jett and Lita Ford are fucking awesome.

It's INTERESTING, maybe. But it has NOTHING to do with how good the record is. Period. (And yeah, it does have something to do with how good a songwriter she is. Obviously. But I've already explained why I believe she's a better songwriter than her alleged ghostwriters are.)

I can hum the chorus to "Miss World" and I've heard a really great arrangement of "Malibu" once. Saw Hole twice live. And I just don't think much of her beyond any of that.

I really don't see the relevance of the 'who wrote it?' debate either.

I really don't see the relevance of the 'who wrote it?' debate either.

The question being mooted since this thread heated up (in my pea brain, at least) is Chuck's claim that she is a better songwriter than her husband.

xpost:
Have any of her "fuck buddies" ever come out and said Courtney doesn't write her own lyrics?

That would be debating her lyricism. Chuck brought up songwriting.

You could say that about a lot of artists, though.

Should I say something about radical subjectivism now?

Isn't that what ILM is all about?!?

Yes, actually, that would be a big fucking deal. And not just for women wearing lab coats. Oh fucking hell, it's neither here nor there. (But I do get your point, Blount.)

and celelbrity skin and live thru this sound very much like they were written by the same person (at different points in the market cycle)(fwiw gimme the best parts of celebrity skin over the best parts of live thru this ANY DAY)

this -- gimme the best parts of celebrity skin over the best parts of live thru this ANY DAY -- is also true, celebrity skin has better singles even though I think LTT is a better album (i.e. has fewer crappy songs).

But I love those two records, and other scattered Courtney stuff. I don't understand the hate either. Not liking her music, being put off by her shtick, OK, I can see that even if I completely disagree. But the nastiness toward her comes from other, viler places.

Oh do give me a royal break. Je4nne, you know I love ya, but that statement is simply a TOWERING STACK OF FRESHLY SQUEEZED, UNHOMOGENIZED CRAPOLA

Hells yeah.

:::yawn::::

Last time I checked, Courtney Love did not singularly represent every solitary member of her particular gender.

See upthread...

Answers
ALBUMS:
1. Courtney Love America's Sweetheart
2. Living Things Black Skies in Broad Daylight
3. The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me
4. David Banner MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water
5. Mahjongg Machinegong
6. Icarus Line Penance Soiree
7. Will to Power Spirit Warrior
8. Country Teasers Full Moon Empty Sportsbag
9. Les Baton Rouge My Body - The Pistol

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), June 1st, 2004.

call this short-sighted, but I kinda wish she did! at least for a day I'd love it if every woman I encountered was stumbling around screaming that Vanity Fair had fucked them over again and nobody in this town has read any goddamn sartre.

1/the topic question - "why do people on ilm hate 'live through this'"? That's kind of a curious question, really. there's a bunch of views w/r/t courtney on this thread and others on ilm. On a bunch of other boards I read, whenever her name comes up, the responses are much more consistently negative, like "she's going to die ha ha" 95% "actually she's cool" 5%

2/I did used to really hate her whole schtick, and the music and stuff, but it was because of the 100% +ve, gushing praise they got in the music papers. That was kind of annoying. Now I don't give a shit really

3/lita ford and joan jett are indeed fucking awesome, joan jett especially. I wasn't thinking about this on the way home (I was thinking: Lydia Lunch is fucking awesome, babes in toyland were ok, I guess) I just read that on this thread.

Did you talk about them in Stairway to Hell? I recognize this name...

xpost

yeah, I think Raszebrae are #499 out of 500, or something!

I would take her over Ian McCulloch, probably, though.

Oh woah, and "She Sells Sanctuary" just came on my stereo as I typed this. Eerie.

I find it funny that chuck thinks "Doll Parts" - a prototypical Cobain song if there ever was one; the lyrical imagery, structure, overall sound and vocal delivery are all quintessential Kcurdt - is somehow better than anything Cobain actually issued under his own name. Ever the contrarian...

As regards to her *music* I give not a shit about her shooting heroin while pregnant. Nor, when I listen to "Malibu", do I give judge it with respect to her pulling her out a breast out in front of Wendy's so passing shoppers may snap photos that spread wildly over the internet. Nor do her junkie sunken jowls make me think any different about her Four-Non-Blondes-leader-cowritten songs. The bottom line for me is that most of her music (excepting "Doll Parts", which I mentioned above as being a great, honest, tragic song and clearly written by her late husband) is the aural equivalent of a passing car outside my window -- something to ignore, but which may momentarily cause me to look up.

(And how come nobody ever whines about Dave Grohl "riding down the river of success on the course of his dead partner"?)

I have no opinion whatsoever of Dave Grohl.

xpost

...and man, did they suck.

And if you can't figure out my point about your silly little "Courtney was Kurt's ghostwriter!" tangent on your own... ayiyiyi.

As for LTT, I heard it an awful lot when I was younger, thinking I had only heard bits of it. When I listened to it later I realised I had heard the whole thing most times. Don't know what that means. There's just something unfulfilling about it, I guess. It's the sort of album I could see at a party and find out that someone had just played the while thing without me noticing.

yikes.

-- CeCe Peniston (anthonyisrigh...), August 31st, 2004.

I have nothing to add to the thread in question other than to remark that I almost blew coffee through my nose when I read that.

If you think Lydia Lunch is good, then you are beyond deaf. She's awful. And her books are even worse than her music. People like her and Penny Arcade and the rest of that pretentious, no-talent downtown "performace artist" residue should just bag it.

And come on, Lita Ford? Joan Jett? Besides the Runaways, what do they really have, four or five good songs each?

At the very least, Joan's got her album with the Gits (as "Evil Stig") which is fucking awesome. I'd happily defend both Jett and Ford all day, they're both miles ahead of Courtney.

Show me where I made such a "claim," Shakey. I referred to a book I said I hadn't even read, for crissakes. As I've said repeatedly, I don't really CARE who wrote whose songs -- Hole beat the pants off Nirvana even if that's not really Courtney's voice SINGING on those records. It. Doesn't. Matter. But nobody has given any concrete evidence that Curt DID write Courtney's songs, either. Most likely, they helped *each other* (yes, obviously, WHEN THEY WERE IN THE PHYSICAL PROXIMITY TO ACTUALLY DO SO). They were married, after all. (and picking a collaborator is a skill in itself, by the way. It's sort of what musicians DO. That people are so obssessed with Courtney having help is some kind of bizzare authenticity test I don't get at all. Maybe it's what happens when dumb people fall for genius myths.)

I just think its funny that you cling to the idea of Live Through This's songs being so much better than Nirvana, regardless of whether or not they were actually *written and performed* by members of Nirvana. So Curt's songs were great as long as he wasn't singing them, is that it?

Nothing wrong with thinking like that. That explains how I feel about Bob Dylan, pretty much.

x-post

If she wrote her songs, she is also a better songwriter. And since the songs on her album have better lyrics, I assume she did. But I don't really CARE whether she did. If he wrote all the songs on her albums, and she wrote all the songs on his, HE is a better songwriter.

Either way, she made better albums.

It's not that hard to figure out. And it's not contradictory at all.

Except that, y'know, it would be typical of you to profess to like something because so many other people in your profession have come to hate it.

Enh, whatever... I judge all this based entirely upon which albums I listen to more... I listen to LTT every so often and would easily take both of them over the Nirvana catalog (which I sold back AGES ago)

the critics have largely turned against Ms. Love. I doubt a majority would still rate that the best album of whatever year it came out.

"And Hole NEVER sounded like Nirvana to me. And they still don't."

I think yr gonna be in the minority with that opinion. But hey, prove me wrong. I think your ears hear things a lot of other people, myself included obviously, just do not hear.

Also, while some of the Corgan co-writes on Celebrity Skin are among the best on the album, some of the non-Corgan cowrites are brilliant too, and for similar reasons - see "Boys on the Radio", which is along with "Malibu" my favourite song from the album. The unifying factor between the two is Hole itself (oddly no-one ever seems to care whether Hole's guitarist is a good songwriter or not, as if it only matters if Courtney's somehow seducing/exploiting the male songwriter she apparently steals from - but I bet he is too).

I don't think Live Through This sounds much like Nirvana, either. "Violet" sound like the Gun Club to me. America's Sweetheart sounds more like Nirvana than any Hole album.

I don't hate "Live Through This", but I was a little disappointed when it came out. She kept talking about how it was gonna be their big pop breakthrough and it didn't sound all that pop to me. I thought she was still trying to fit in with those grunge people. Ho hum. I'm with everybody who likes Celebrity Skin better.

oh this is ridiculous. joan jett easily has the best voice of anyone mentioned on this thread thus far.

Maybe - -But Stevie Nicks and Grace Slick are some pretty tough competition. At any rate, saying she has only four or five good songs is just plain idiotic (or at least grossly uniformed), I agree. (And though I'm not sure how many good songs Lita Ford has, "Kiss Me Deadly" alone counts for a few hundred in my book.)

But on the level of how many lives* Courtney has effected, and by how much, her body of work is very large.

(*Mostly a certain sort of girl)

So far we've had the damning "he sang backing vocals on one version of a song!" and lots of use of words like "clearly", so I think it's pretty clear that the real answer is: "because Kurt was a sainted suffering genius martyr, and Courtney is a hysterical whore!"

anyway, Joan Jett (and Lita Ford) have way more than "4 or 5 songs". Jett's album w/the Gits as Evil Stig is fantastic, and that has at least 8 or 9 songs on it!

That is a beautiful typo.

1. Ian McCulloch is cooler than you'll EVER be, Anthony.
2. Anthony is not fit to sift through Ian Astbury's manful dung.
3. Courtney Love ain't nothing but a star-fucking opportunist. Full stop.
4. Dave Grohl does not exploit his tenure in Nirvana.

Oh, frankE, sorry...I didn't realize you were being sarcastic way upthread.

Let's remember that countless MALE band-members are REGULARLY STAR-FUCKERS TO THE EXTREME, not to mention groupie-FUCKERS EXTRAORDINAIRES. How often is the term "star-fucker" associated with men, I wonder

When they cross the rubicon and become parents. That's when.

And Curt Kobain was a starfucker as well.

And Joan Jett covered "Starfucker" by the Stones on her best album!!

I wasn't defending Kurt. Ever.

And Ned, I certainly felt a little protozoan by the time we got to Akbar. Too many Chuck Taylors = too many tequila drinks. I trust you heard about our drinking game.

On the contrary, I think her self-obsession does yield an awareness of just how desperate/pathetic/sad she is, noted in songs from "doll parts" to newer ones like "sunset strip," AS' highlight. Add to that her knack for self-mythologizing, which few in rock can currently match, and you have an even more unique tragic figure = the self-loathing banshee who'd still shoot up first before helping her daughter with her math homework.

Bet there's lots of other rock folk who aren't darlings of the media who shoot-up and neglect kids. We're all victims of National Enquirer syndrome.

You're taking the term 'starfucker' too literally. It's basically a lurid euphimism for a shamelessly name-dropping opportunist, which she irrefutably is.

Stop being such an apologist for her. She courts the media.

Peace and love, Alex in NYC!

Hippy.

Because she courts the media doesn't mean we're not playing into her game by gnashing our mental teeth over her.

Fine. She's winning then. I don't see how that makes her any less pathetic, however.

No that I know Ned and Spencer dance I know I can trust them to join in.

Ned - Every 10 pairs of Converse Chuck Taylorss we counted = one tequila shot or margarita.

http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2004/2004-03/09-love-inside.jpg

and this, from 1996:

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9612/24/courtney.love/courtney.jpg

Or, from my layperson's pov, even the "admirable" stuff like exercise, workaholicism etc etc can be destructive. Look at certain mountain-climbers, marathon runners who neglect family, whatever to go go go, for whatever reason. I can't name names but you see what I mean, probably

If one could die of nail-biting my ex-smoker husband would not be on this earth, today. And it's a good thing we can't die of media-worship or tv-watching. Or maybe we can. What would we do without Courtney? This thread would be alive and well with "X" album in the title and we'd be blabbing away about a culprit/person with a different name.

Having said that though, and agreeing with Tim wholeheartedly that women are held to a different standard then men in all arenas, Courtney is pretty fucking wacky! And annoying!

But Live Through This is great!

many xpost - i've seen it

xpost - the muppet was way hotter.

The whole "Courtney's antics are intertwined with her music" line of argument is almost always directed at female not male performers - see also Tori Amos, Bjork etc.

When this argument is applied to a male performer though, it tends to be as a positive statement: qf Eminem. I always thought it was a shame that Courtney and Tori hate each other so much, mainly because you can pretty much some up male rock critic reactions to women through just reading their reviews.

Michael Jackson I find scary and appalling, both musically and personally. Just like Courtney!

He's another plastic surgery disaster.

as for yr axl qualifiers, those are all pretty vague and could apply to thousands of performers. (omg, singers expressing their private pathologies thru lyrics??! No way! No one had ever done that before! Why don't we just switch focus over to Trent Reznor instead...)

OTM OTM OTM

Or maybe we should just change the subject, I know how you like that. Trent vs. Axl in spoiled baby rockstar FITE!

x-post

I didn't accuse anyone of saying this, I was making a larger point about gender-based double standards. Read what I wrote, as you say.

never met or heard anything from someone painting her as a "hero, either".

The more people are bugged by someone, the more uptight they expose themselves to be. When bugged, ignore. There's lots more interesting stuff in the world to focus on. Like talking about the music.
OTM OTM OTM OTM OTM

Celebrity haters = me yawning.

letting the thread morph into whatever = maybe we should just change the subject, I know how you like that

so be careful.

so be careful"

I think I've just entered a Brian de Palma movie.

Not interestingly or surpisingly, I just noticed that it only took three posts for this thread to veer into the world of Courtney and away from the album.

Is that an ILM record, I wonder.

They made a conscious decision to keep themselves private, which Courtney has never done at any point in the last twelve years.

Making a conscious effort to keep oneself out of the limelight does a lot to transcend the differences between male celebrities and female celebrities.

?

What differences?

i agree with yr second post, natch

xpost

xpost

On this, Chuck, we can agree. And he's a better songwriter than Kurt, Courtney, Billy, and Linda Perry. *If* he's still writing his own songs.

whoa...xposts out a wah-zoo.

But talking about somebody staying out of the spotlight gets boring real fast (MJ is an exception, but then again, his level of ubercelebrity and uberfreakiness is also an exception). People move on to talking about other things -- but in Courtney's case, she always reappears to supply them with new ammunition. What the media/fans/Courtney hataz do with that ammunition is a different matter (as opposed to how they would treat male celebs).

(xposts, etc.)

And he is a better singer and dancer as well!! And he hires better rhythm sections! (Axl comes oddly close on all counts, however. And they're both from Indiana!)

-- Vic (filmclasse...), September 1st, 2004.

You had to do a presentation on the film to get that across?

Anyway, as for my two cents worth: I've always been indifferent towards Hole/Courtney Love. I don't have that scarily irrational hatred that some people seem to have of her. She's written some good songs ("Violet" and "Doll Parts" especially). But I dunno, she never made much of an impression on me.

The whole Cobain wrote LTT thing is bullshit. Any similarity between Hole and Nirvana prolly comes from them working in roughly similar styles of music and the fact of Cobain and Love being married. It's well-known that they influenced each other's writing, but that doesn't equal cobain writing hole's album.

We creepy people typing away are far from the brain of a rock-star, I'm sorry to say this but I must. vive la difference

Oh for cryin' out loud, Fuck Michael Jackson!

Thea isn't creepy or bilious. Sure, she hangs around in belfreys and keeps talking about the blood of the living, but who doesn't?

I wonder if they combined their album collections? Or kept them in separate rooms. (Kurt's was more indie '80s pigfuck and Courtney's more major-label '80s modern rock, from what little I've read. I bet Curt would be real pissed if Courtney mis-filed his Flipper album!)

People probably hate it cuz they hate Courtney, cuz...she could be a cunt sometimes.

For once in this thread I'm in agreement with Alex

This is kinda embarrassing, but when I first heard her sing that line in "Asking for It" - "Live through this and I swear that I would die for you," or something like that - I actually cried.

"Doll Parts" is also excellent. Heartbreaking, too.

I hate the corny Chinatown/LA dystopia images on the cover and the insert, although the nod to the cover of the Gun Club's Miami is sort of nice.

Tim Finney--sorry I missed your comments about Eric Erlandson just three posts above mine. I wonder if he's retired? He used to be a real man-about-town, EfH, but I rarely see him out anymore. Not that I get out much, though.

how is this a patronizing statement?

Wait, am I using the word "patronizing" correctly?

(Also, I'm leaving in less than twenty minutes.)

Dammit, I know I'm gonna have to leave any minute now...

courtney introduced to me the idea that i could be a rock bitch, and the riot grrrls drove it home. i haven't heard any other hole albums. i had the misfortune of hearing "mono" recently and found it boring and lifeless.

This is my favorite comment on this entire thread, I think!

What's so great about what I said?