The (W)hole deal. (Celebrity Skin - Hole)

Member Name: scarykitten

Product:	Celebrity Skin - Hole
Date:	11/08/01 (46 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: meaningful, great vocals, supurb musically

Disadvantages: (none)

Hole are a band who are always likely to be in the limelight. Not just because the lead singer Courtney Love was married to the late Kurt Cobain (of Nirvana), or because Courtney is a huge character in herself, but because the music is amazing. There is not many female-fronted bands around, (well not compared to the number of male-fronted bands), so when a band like Hole writes music of this calibre, it is certain to get noticed.

This is Hole’s third album (with the title coming from the name of an American celebrity photo magazine) and drew very mixed reviews when it was first released in 1998. Hole fan veteran, John Peel, clamed it was “just rubbish” after praising and promoting both of Hole’s other albums on his Radio 1 show.
However, others have said that this is Hole’s best offering to date. Gone are the screeching, anger-fuelled vocals, replaced with softer, more melodic voices, with the powerful rock coming from the guitars of Eric Erlandson, the bass of Melissa Auf Der Maur, and the drumming of Patty Schemel. This is an album that cannot be missed.

It is very difficult to classify Hole’s music into a particular genre or category, as it is all so varied. Maybe if you think about a female Nirvana as a starting point, but then add in much more rockier elements, and less of the grunge. Also, take out the depression and replace it with anger, Courtney is a girl with a lot to say, and she expresses it all through her music.

On that note, lets take a look at the music on this album, song-by-song:


1. Celebrity Skin

This is a song about the whole Hollywood concept, it’s falsity, and it’s shallowness. “HOOKER, WAITRESS, MODEL, ACTRESS OH JUST GO NAMELESS”. This is saying that anyone can be famous in Hollywood for a little while. The song is also about Courtney herself, “Oh make me over, I’m all I want to be”. Courtney is telling us tha
t she didn’t sell-out when she changed her appearance to a more, traditional Hollywood style, she just did what she wanted to do.


2. Awful

This song is about young girls who need to take control of their own lives, and not be run by men or run by the corporate boy/girl-bands that their supposed to listen to, to make them look cool. "If the world is so wrong yeah you can take it all with one song" This line is showing that it’s never too late for you to change your life. All it takes is something small, and if you want to do it, then do it.

3. Hit So Hard

I think Hit So Hard is about becoming infatuated with this totally beautiful, perfect guy, like love at first sight but with more lust mixed in. The line "I look at him and drown" describes the feeling especially well, it's like you look at the person and this wave of conflicting emotions comes over you and "drowns" you. I think there's a sexual thing to the song as well, which to me makes the song like a story of a relationship in Courtney's life based on mostly physical infatuation.


4. Malibu

I believe that this song is about how close the distinction between being perfectly happy and wanting to commit suicide is. Go one way from Malibu and end up in Hollywood. Go the other way and end up in the ocean. It’s also saying that you should never give up hope “come on be alive again, don’t lay down and die”.

5. Reasons To Be Beautiful


This is an anti-love song. It is about how when Courtney was in love, she had lots of reasons to make herself look good and feel good. But as soon as her heart was broken she couldn’t find one reason to feel or look good anymore. She is clutching at straws as she would do anything for love again “I’ll give you my body, just sell me your soul”

6. Dying

This is one of my favourite songs
on the album. It is a song about love and death. The more you love someone the more you suffer, the more you suffer the more you secretly wish to die for love. The truth is that love takes everything you have inside and as long as you think that you are loved, you don't see that it's leaving you empty and dying.

7. Use Once & Destroy

This song refers to the line in Nirvana's Radio Friendly Unit Shifter "use just once and destroy." It is about how Kurt treated Courtney like a drug, and used her cause he was dependent on her. In the end, he had run out of the “Courtney drug” so killed himself.

8. Northern Star

I believe this is a song about life after Kurt. Courtney was very depressed, and the song is about how she coped with this, and how she would one day be re-united with Kurt.

9. Boys On The Radio

This is a song, which is dedicated to anyone who ever drowned. It is about how if you have ever lost a loved one that they will still love you, and be waiting for you on the other side. When it is your time to die, then you will go to the same place as your loved one “When the water is too deep, You can close your eyes, and really sleep”

10. Heaven Tonight

This is a song about Courtney Love’s daughter, Frances. It contains beautiful lyrics such as “Here comes the sun, in the form of a girl” and shows that Courtney really cares and loves her daughter.

11. Playing Your Song

This song is about Courtney’s ex-husband Kurt Cobain, and his band Nirvana. It is an attack on the music industry that didn’t recognise Nirvana as the classic band they were, until Kurt had died. And that they didn’t “play their song” until after the band had finished. It could possibly be blaming the music industry for Kurt’s suicide, for not treating Nirvana with the respect they deserved.

12. Petals
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I think that this is a song about loss of innocence. The “petals” are the different aspects of purity, and the song is about how they are being removed “tear the petals off of me”. It is the final song on the album, and a beautiful climax.



Hope my opinion was useful to some of you and you haven’t fallen asleep yet, and hopefully I’ve persuaded some of you to go buy this album now.

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