Courtney Love turns 51 Thursday in an emotional year that has already seen the release of some of her most private moments with her deceased ex-husband in the documentary Montage of Heck as well as another “documentary” that attempts to pin said husband’s death on her.
While the last year has been a rather extreme example of Kurt Cobain’s legacy coming back to haunt her, in truth it’s par for the course for Love. She’s been in the shadow of Cobain and the band he fronted since the pair began dating in the early ‘90s. Writers’ love of an simple, easy-to-follow narrative (that Kurt and his band single-handedly “broke” the alternative rock scene to the mainstream) and the Cult of Nirvana it inspired have relegated Love and her band Hole to a historical second-fiddle.
And that’s a damn shame, because Hole was unquestionably the better band.
Now, now. Put your pitchforks down for just a second and I’ll give you four solid reasons why Courtney and her cohorts deserve way more respect.
Let’s start with the most obvious…
Hole wrote better songs
Before I dive into this point, let me share two lyrical snippets from representative Nirvana and Hole songs:
Nirvana:
Sell the kids for food,
Weather changes moods,
Spring is here again,
reproductive glands
Hole:
When they get what they want,
and they never want it again,
Go on, take everything,
take everything,
I want you to.
In this case, Cobain has proven himself to be better at rhyming, but that’s the only victory he wins. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of Nirvana’s hit “In Bloom” is gibberish.
Sure, if you’re familiar with Cobain’s story – the tumultuous relationship with Love, the battles with drug abuse and depression, etc. – you can squeeze some meaning out of it. But that’s viewing the song through the lens of the Cult of Nirvana. We live in a world where everyone knows Kurt’s story and has ascribed meaning to his artistic output accordingly. Every song carries added weight because of Cobain and his tragic death.
“Violet” is a better song because it doesn’t need all that headcanon to hit hard. Love’s words are direct and obvious as she howls at a lover who has left her feeling used up and worthless.
The meta bits are there if you want them (general consensus says the song is about Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins), but you don’t need it to feel a little ill when Love growls “You should learn how to say ‘no’.” Oh, and in case you want to bring up the rumors that Cobain wrote most of Hole’s Live Through This, don’t – they’ve been debunked pretty thoroughly.
There’s a reason Hole was able to consistently write songs that stand on their own better than those of Nirvana. Put plainly…
Hole saw beyond themselves
Almost every Nirvana song is an exercise in self-pity, a look inward at all the angst and rage that Cobain was feeling at the time.
You can’t blame Cobain. Those feelings were so strong that they eventually killed him. But what Courtney Love and Hole did with their despair far outweighs what Cobain did with his.
Hole had their fair share of angsty songs, but they always used that angst to shine a light outward. Both Love and Cobain wrote songs about intensely personal situations, but only the former couched her complaints in universal language that any listener (especially female ones) could understand.
Compare “Heart-Shaped Box” with “Doll Parts.” Both songs consist of Cobain and Love addressing each other. But “Someday you will ache like I ache” is going to take the wind out of a lot more people than “She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak.”
Moving beyond the micro-level to take a look at both band’s careers, we have to address the fact that…
Hole evolved
Nirvana didn’t change much from Bleach…
to Nevermind…
to In Utero.
With the exception of production values, those could all come from the same album.
Compare that to Hole, who went from Pretty On The Inside…
to Live Through This…
to Celebrity Skin.
Hole was a great band regardless of the style in which they chose to play. They were an excellent, feminist noise-rock band in 1989 and an excellent feminist pop band in 1998.
We have to consider that Nirvana’s career is largely monolithic. There’s a very real possibility that we would have tired of their largely unchanging sound had they not disbanded due to such unfortunate circumstances.
Bands evolve or become jokes, and only Hole showed an ability to do the former.
Hole’s legacy is better
I can hear the comment section shouting from here.
I didn’t say greater. Obviously, Nirvana has influenced more bands. That’s what happens when you sell more than 75 million records and your songs play on rock radio every 15 minutes for two decades.
I said better.
Nirvana inspired the “bubble grunge” wave, which pretty directly led to modern butt-rock like Five Finger Death Punch clogging up the few remaining alternative radio stations.
Courtney Love and Hole’s influence is apparent in much more relevant and interesting artists. Every time Lady Gaga stepped on stage during her peak, you could see Love’s influence. Great artists like Tove Lo and Mish Way of White Lung have cited Hole as a major influence. It’s a quality-over-quantity situation (and that’s before you factor in that Hole members are still making great music of their own).
So, if you haven’t already jumped to the comments, can I make a suggestion?
Next time you’re in a record store deciding whether to buy a $60 reissue of Nevermind, walk on over to ‘H’ and buy Hole’s entire discography instead. We owe it to Hole for all the years we’ve neglected them.
And you owe it to your ears, because Hole’s the better band.
