The sentiment of the anti-hero seems to be a theme amongst the top artists within the last year. Just look at Taylor Swift's song "Anti-hero" or The Weekend's whole Dawn FM album as examples. As these pop stars look inwardly at themselves and the life of stardom, there's a point where they can be seen as the "bad guy" among the media and fans. It's a fun arc to explore and cover, when done right. A great quote from Batman sums this up nicely: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain". A very simplified way to look at the real lives of stars, who are just people like the rest of us and aren't prefect. This theme got me thinking of big stars who are seen as "villains", from over the years, and Courtney Love came to mind.
Even to this day she's been surrounded by controversy and has active haters, that date back to her days being married to Kurt Cobain. It's a fascinating rabbit hole to dive into and these ideas of being a antagonist bleeds into the music that she created at the time with the band Hole. The album Live Through This will always be haunted by the controversy of Kurt's suicide and Courtney's partnership with him, as this album was released just days after his unfortunate passing. In fact, Kurt and Courtney were working on their respective albums (Nevermind for Nirvana and Live Through This for Hole) at the same time. I personally think it's really awesome that they are were likely bouncing ideas off each other when creating their art. Pushing each other to achieve better work.
What I love most about Live Through This is Courtney's honest and no thrills approach to writing about her past traumas and the struggles of being a middle aged woman in the spotlight. Everything from motherhood, assault, and drug usage is covered with angry aggressive vocals and equally hard hitting instruments. This unhinged passion comes through in the album and can be compared with any of the other great grunge albums of the day, including Nevermind.
Unfortunately Courtney will likely continue to be an antagonist figure, which could be self inflicted at times, while Kurt is revered as the protagonist of grunge (which is deserved on his end but it sucks the band Hole is not nearly talked about as much for this time period). One good thing is that I have seen people review Hole's work more optimistically, then it has been in the past, and I hope this small time blog helps propel that positive message :)
______________________________________________________________
Highlighted song and lyrics:
Miss World -"I'm miss world, watch me break and watch me burn"
______________________________________________________________
Similar bands to check out:
Veruca Salt, L7, PJ Harvey, Bikini Kill
_______________________________________________________________
Reviews and links to check out:
The Radio Ga Ga Podcast- Retrospective of Live Through This
Trash Theory YouTube Channel- The Traumas and Rock Stars That Inspired Courtney Love on LIVE THROUGH THIS
Pitchfork.com- Review
No comments:
Post a Comment