Trivia / Courtney Love

• Artist Disillusionment: She is very candid on her view of the entertainment business and her peers, holding little back, which has made her plenty of enemies along the way. Notably, she delivered a very insightful, informative and well-written speech about how artists are unfairly treated by the record industry in 1999.
• Baby Name Trend Killer: Courtney's personal problems and her factor in Cobain's death resulted in the baby name "Courtney" plummeting in popularity in the second half of the 1990s.
• Creative Differences: Dave Grohl. The two have had strong feelings about each other and have been in multiple legal battles ever since Cobain's death and Nirvana's dissolution. They reconciled in the 2010s, where they famously embraced on stage at Nirvana's induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and have generally remained at peace since.
• Creator Breakdown: Has had multiple spectacular ones to the point that she's more famous for them than for her work as an artist. Courtney herself regularly refers to the massive personal breakdown she suffered in the mid 2000s as "The Letterman Years".
• Creator Backlash: She called her solo album "a mistake", and admitted she was too loaded on drugs to really care about recording it. She did like a few songs on it however and her favorite track from it, "Mono" (the only single), is still performed live by her regularly.
  • She also regrets "reuniting" Hole, and wishes she'd been brave enough to actually put Nobody's Daughter out under her own name.
  • She doesn't hold her solo album America's Sweetheart in high regard, viewing it as a mediocre record tainted by Executive Meddling which she didn't put much effort into as she was loaded on drugs and in the midst of a major personal breakdown while it was being recorded. She also really hates the cover art.
  • More generally, the entire decade of the 2000s is now an old shame to her, as she went through a massive personal breakdown where she spiraled severely into drug addiction, resulting in many bizarre public appearances, multiple arrests, multiple stints in rehab and even being locked away in mental hospitals as she tried to get her addictions and personal issues under control. Today she refers to the 2000s as "The Letterman Years", referring to an infamous incident in 2004 where she jumped on David Letterman's desk and flashed her breasts on national TV.
  • Similarly, while she doesn't hate Nobody's Daughter, she does regret reviving Hole without getting its original 1990s lineup back together and generally feels that Nobody's Daughter doesn't really work as a Hole album. In hindsight, she wishes she would have released it as a solo album instead.
  • She has said that she has no memory of 1995-96 because of all the drugs she was loaded on at the time.
• Creator Couple: A very dysfunctional example with Kurt.
• Promoted Fangirl: Love managed to convince Kim Gordon to produce the first Hole album by sending her a letter about how much they admired her work and in particular "the SST album"^note It's not clear whether she's talking about EVOL or Sister, along with copies she owned of early SY singles.
• Follow the Leader:
  • She feels this way about Taylor Momsen.
  • For Love herself, Stevie Nicks, who she strongly admires.
  • She reinvented Unkempt Beauty for the 90s, with tattered little dresses, smeared makeup and unbrushed hair. The look in question, Kinderwhore, was the attempt to look like a prostitute crossed with a child playing dress-up. She was accused of stealing it from Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland.
• I Am Not Spock: Don't call Courtney Love a Riot Grrl. While Hole was commonly characterized as a Riot Grrl band, Love didn't agree and distanced herself from the movement at almost every opportunity. Love has long been a critic of the Riot Grrl movement, stating that the Riot Grrl bands leaned on identity politics to compensate for the subpar quality of their music. In Hole's song "Rock Star", she mocks them as being unoriginal and conformist.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Courtney Love would have been one of the guest stars in the Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza" if Sonic Youth hadn't refused to do the episode if she was involved.
  • Quentin Tarantino approached Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love to play "Lance" and "Jody" in Pulp Fiction, but they declined. Lance was the drug dealer, not the stickup guy at the diner. Jody was the girl with all the piercings, not the stickup gal at the diner. (Tarantino is thanked in the liner notes to In Utero. Nirvana is also thanked on the back of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.)
  • The 1995 Hole lineup played a show together in 2012 on a whim, while the Nobody's Daughter lineup was still touring as Hole. Courtney has been dropping hints that she wants to do something more with this for years, but still nothing concrete has happened for various reasons, a major one likely being how both Schemel and Auf der Maur have left the entertainment industry and returned to living private lives.

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