Recommend me something similar to Hole's 'Celebrity Skin'

Courtney diverges from teenpop in her avoidance of a) ProToolisms and b) electronic touches. It's glossy but still passes for "authentic rock" (she's a bit of a r*ckist).

I guess what also makes Celebrity Skin interesting is the meta-concept around it: coming from punk to pop, as Eppy said, dismissing the whole sell-out ethos on the steaming ashes of the "better-to-burn-out" martyr, Cobain.

cheap trick and joan jett are obvious precedents, of course.

"Boys On The Radio" in particular is amazing for this: it just keeps spiralling, right up to that little drum break on "Baby I've gone away!".

So you get this opposition whereby Courtney is immediately identifiable within (and with) these songs, and very much owns these songs both vocally and lyrically, and yet on many of the best tracks she's kinda decentered, just another component... she can let go in a way that Billy Corgan would never be able to (either for control reasons or because of the nature of his voice), and it means that even the songs he cowrites never really make me think of the Smashing Pumpkins unless I search for connections.

That decenteredness is maybe why I half-heartedly claimed on the teenpop thread that Celebrity Skin is more of a pop album than I Am Me. It's not, really, but it does strike me as bearing a strong similarity to the Max Martin golden age: these glittering architectural structures that the listener and the vocalist both become ensnared in, these perfectly constructed pop songs with inevitable tidal peaks and valleys.

Whereas, despite Frank's claim that it would be nice to see Ashlee's vocals carry her choruses more, I actually find Ashlee's vocals to be always very dominant, always front and center, it's hard to get behind them or beside them, to be a spectator alongside Ashlee rather than a spectator of Ashlee (not that you'd necessarily want it to change, this is just how I Am Me and Celebrity Skin differ).

*shudders*

yikes.

Celebrity Skin also adds a golden sugary layer of Fleetwood Mac-isms. The harmonies are everywhere on this

the sighing backing vocals (set at the perfect volume so that they bleed into Courtney's voice without drowning them out), while Courtney's almost dully intoning what sounds like timeless wisdom over the top

Otm

i promised i'd stop saying OTM, but jeez, OTM.

Anyway, I do love this album (less than I did when I was doing the tortured 16 year old thing, but still). My favourite track is "Northern Star", Courtney was never more goff.

I think the critical line being taken here of 'it's like Billy/Pumpkins but I can stand it' is an amusing kinda negative wish fulfillment. "Ugh, I can't be seen to actually like anything Corgan did, thank god there's a way out for me!" ;-)

I myself have no particular interest in meta-1978s but I tend to prefer when Daft Punk does it instead.

Dude, there's a track on Pretty on the Inside that IS "Dark Entries" by Bauhaus. NONE MORE GOTH THAN THAT.

maybe for some. i like a bunch of pumpkins singles (the crescendoing drums on "tonight tonight" is one of my favorite moments in '90s pop), but he wears me out in extended doses. i just think on "celebrity skin" he helped courtney get the big glam-bam she was looking for, because that's something he does well.

I'm sure Courtney said in one of her interviews around Live Through This that they ripped off so much from Bauhaus..

This is the part where I confess to just repeating that five seconds more times than anyone could really consider healthy.

Also, it is good! The first six tracks are solid, "Sunset Strip" and "Almost Golden" in particular.

After that, it gets filler-y, but in the way of filler that occasionally shows up to surprise you on Shuffle. The gall with which she cops, um, "More Than A Feeling" on "Hello" is vintage.

The combined pixie-dust of Corgan and Michael Beinhorn on Celebrity Skin is sheer pop alchemy. I love it.

I am reminded of Whitechocolatespaceegg --> Liz Phair.

I should clarify Eppy - there's definite similarities in the music, it's just that the difference in vocals makes me tend to overlook them.

I'd say the closest Smashing Pumpkins track might actually be "Today" because it's their sunniest.

IMO, the contrast between the sunny production and the nihilistic lyrics, a la Steely Dan, is a central ingredient that sets it apart from Corgan

This is amusing to me because Corgan's said the song was written on a birthday when he was thinking about committing suicide, and that therefore the intent of the song is thoroughly sarcastic.

i forget, did he have a hand in "petals"? that song kills me... sheesh, talk about fleetwood goth. completely girly and witchy.

Urgent & Key Corgan tracks: title track, "Hit So Hard", "Malibu", "Petals"

Urgent & Key Non-Corgan tracks: "Awful", "Use Once & Destroy", "Northern Star", "Boys on the Radio"

So I sorta think it's about half 'n'half.

Ned perhaps the difference b/w Celebrity Skin and "Today" is that the irony isn't laid quite so bare - the choruses of "Today" call out the verses as liars, whereas on the sunny numbers on Celebrity Skin do not let their masks slip so much, or perhaps it's that they're pitched at a place where sunniness and suicidal depression can co-exist more easily . "Awful", "Malibu", "Boys on the Radio" all focus around notions of disillusion and dissolution, damage and decay - not physical but emotional/psych/social... "How are you so burned when you're barely on fire?" "I know that you were rotten to the core"... and yet this does not render their sunniness sarcastic, they're much more wistful than anything else, and maybe this is why people think of "1979" (except that "1979" is only wistful: Corgan is more interesting in focusing on one particular emotion and taking it to extremes, it's the goth in him. Courtney is aware that songs mean different things for different people, have multiple purposes. This is perhaps the pop star in her)

.I'm tempted to think the use of musical sunniness in Celebrity Skin is a meta-statement about the triumph of music over biography. In the same way that Fleetwood Mac's songs persevere on radio long after everyone has forgotten the intra-band warfare, Courtney's lyrics seem obsessively focused on the afterlife of Nirvana etc. ("all the boys on the radio/they crash and burn they fold and fade so slow..."), "the legacy" for better or worse. So she writes (or co-writes) deliberately "timeless"-sounding rock music to comment on the fragility of a moment in rock - the star winks out but the songs live on, she says, and I want mine to as well..

xpost oops Tim just kinda said this.

Oddly I really disliked "Hit So Hard" when I first got the album?!?!?

The only thing I recal thinking about this song is that it was a knockoff of "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)."

Personally, I also love "Heaven Tonight," even if it's just a musical excuse for Billy Corgan to make a Cheap Trick reference, and I think it's a sweet lullaby to Frances.

corgan wasn't involved in heaven tonight in any way. it's a love/erlandson composition, and it was courtney's idea to pay tribute to cheap trick by that reference.

"Playing Your Song" = the most "Live Through This" song on the album. LOVE IT.

Her enunciation of "FUCKIN' WONDERFUL" proves she's a great singer.

i think it's just that she's so scatterbrained that she has a new emotion every five seconds, or she can find a variety of different emotions in one stock "mood" (how many people ever only feel DEPRESSED when they're sad? no, they feel sarcastic, wistful, mad, confused, occasionally exhilarated).

The only thing I recal thinking about this song is that it was a knockoff of "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)."

it took me many years to admit this, but i like it more than "he hit me." it feels more vulnerable, not quite so glib and arch in its irony.

Well, smackdown to me, then :-D

I still think it's a great song.

sure! I love the whole record, why not. "Reasons.." has the "miles and miles of perfect skin" line in it, and a Pavement reference and "When the fire goes out you better learn to fake/It’s better to rise than fade away." so great.

perhaps it's that they're pitched at a place where sunniness and suicidal depression can co-exist more easily

I think it's basically.. the 90's was all about boys on the radio caught in, uh, downward spirals and Courtney's saying, stop, enough of this! (I agree.) I don't find it nihilistic in the least - all the references to passing moments & fading away are more.. acknowledging that & moving on, really. Never been a fan of Billy Corgan but he seems totally stuck in that old melodrama.

xpost

I agree: her lyrics are often exemplary. Compare the how-do-you-like-me? celebrity games of the title track with Nirvana's "Serve the Servants" and the latter just seems sour and enervated.

Not specifically, but her witty unpredictable's been discussed in a few other threads...

TS: "Malibu" versus "Simple Kind of Life"
ts: courtney vs brody
why do people on ILM hate "live through this" ?
Who are the great lyricists of today?

Stolen from a late 80s/90s L.A. band featuring Don Bolles, wasn't it?

-- jonfromsweden (jon.la...), March 14th, 2006.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and i just noticed i used the word "great" two times too many.
-- jonfromsweden (jon.la...), March 14th, 2006. (jonfromsweden)

The remix:
i'm amazed too. and happy. this is a truly grebt album and to see this grebbt discussion, eight years later and without any focus on courtney love's public persona but all about the music, is grebbbt.

Almost 100 posts in, too. This place is weird without Alex in NYC...

I've only heard a couple of songs on Celebrity Skin, so I won't try. I prefer Autobiography to I Am Me, though I like the latter quite a lot; and when Mikael Wood reviewed Autobiography he said that basically it was this decade's Live Through This, so maybe I won't like Celebrity Skin quite as much as I like Live Through This.

(But Autobiography actually has much more of a spring in its step than Live Through This Has does. Autobiography explicates the pain so as to dance free of it. On Live Through This, the pain is a big part of the dance. As it is on the title song of I Am Me.)

I think you will enjoy Celebrity Skin, then.

I also love the other spin on the line darla quoted from "Awful": "It was punk, it was perfect, now it's awful!"

No-one's ever really explained to me the Tori/Courtney/Trent mythology behind "Professional Widow".

http://vintagestars.com/river/SoundsSingles.html

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:fudgyl2jxpnb

(Now I go offline.)

(Now I really go offline.)

this is the version from the "malibu" single:
http://s62.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0AYM1QNQ19PMP0GD4PN43QP3JJ

doubt it. I used to be a Tori fan, as I remember she was singing about herself again in "Widow", stuff like playing in DC piano bars ("gonna wipe a tear/make him feel like a Congressman") to being an LA rock chick quasi groupie etc. She did say it wasn't about Court. though it was great when 90's alt rock was a ridiculous soap opera - if there's a Tori song about that, it's "She's Your Cocaine."

As for Hole, the early version of "Boys on the Radio" was LTT era song "Sugar Coma" introduced sarcastically as being about a couple different people and w/alternate title "I Slept with the Devil".. this was on a truly excellent Unplugged show back in 1995. the whole performance is a treat and Courtney's in top form. sorry, I totally geeked out over Hole back in the day and I'm still wishing she'd get her act together and put out more records..

It's NME, so take it for what it's worth...

http://www.nme.com/news/courtney-love/22499

Exclusive - Courtney Love returns to the studio
The former-Hole star dismisses tabloid rumors as she goes back to work
Courtney Love has entered a Los Angeles studio to begin work on a new solo album.

Following her brief trip to London last week during which she checked out Dirty Pretty Things at Kings College (March 8), Love told NME.COM she's starting pre-production on her second solo album with producer Linda Perry this week.

The main recording of the as yet untitled effort will take place in April with Perry producing the bulk. Billy Corgan is also set to produce a handful of her new tracks.

Discussing the songs she is considering for her upcoming record Love said: "I don't generally talk about what the songs are about, but I will say that in the gutters of this earth you can always find love. In the darkest alley and [during] the lowest moment there is always that thing that glitters just a little bit, no matter how twisted or deadly or violent. It's there magical and transformative. I've written a lot about that."

However she laughed-off suggestions that this could include comedian Steve Coogan, who she was linked with again in weekend news reports.

"We're friends and he's funny as fuck and very cool. But he's not my boyfriend and if he was I sure as hell would never talk about it," she declared, adding the coverage had upset her. "My private life is my private life. I'll say one thing. I'm fucking sick of fucking tabloids, I don't talk to them and I don't like them."

She added that since working with Jim Carrey on the 1999 film 'Man On The Moon' about comedian Andy Kaufman, she had found herself more inspired by comics than rock stars.

"Ever since I worked with Jim Carrey I've related really well to comedians," she said. "I think our jobs are really similar and I'm drawn to people as friends who aren't afraid to go to the edge. A lot of times rockers are trying to be cool so much they forget that the fundamental job is to be as vulnerable as possible. Really good comedians are sometimes more rock 'n' roll than rock 'n' rollers."

Love declared that this now included 'Little Britain''s Matt Lucas and David Walliams, whom she met on her recent London trip, revealing: "I have a 'Fat Fighters' sticker on my guitar!"

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roffle - I'm still holding on to my ticket, just in case... I suppose at this point I should just send it in for the refund. Sigh...

I'm listening to Celebrity Skin right now, actually ("Petals"). So many great lines on this. Before that, Pretty on the Inside, because I really like "Mrs. Jones" for some reason, it's so aggro but there are still some funny lines, uh, not great on paper but the delivery makes them work. "When you fall for the garbage man.. you wind up in the garbage."

Anyone else like Zeplin Song as much as me? I get the feeling most Hole fans really hate it, but it cracks me up, esp "Why are the stoners always stoned? Why are the burners always toast? Why did the chicken cross the road?... To get away from the Zeplin song." awesome. oh, and this one:

Why does he rain on my parade?
Why does the song remain the same?
I can't remember my own name
I work for minimum wage!

There's still smack out there to be shot up.

Weirdo!

dunno if you've seen this, but what she does about half way thru this clip made ms. love go way way up in my estimation.
one of the coolest things i've ever seen anyone do onstage
(the kids up there had been pulled out of the crowd at the front by her beforehand).

Driving down to L.A. once I threw this album on and was surprised to find that everyone in the car with me knew all the words to every song, and we screamed our lungs out from start to finish and some even harmonized. It was amazing.

I also asked Linda Perry about Courtney's new album when I was at her birthday party, and she said it's "so good that it's not even funny."
You know Billy's working with her again. We'll see....

Judging by the boots of Courtney's new album floating around, this could finally be it.

The two songs I heard were good.

https://secure.class.uh.edu/theatre_facapp1/Data%5CImages%5CGodot9.jpg

Liked "Malibu," couldn't stand the rest. Maybe I was the wrong age or tge wrong frame of mind when it came out. Prefer "America's Sweethear" by a long shot.

Melissa's backing vocals are ethereal and flawless.

otm about "dying" but also about the whole record