Go on, take everything – and everyone down a peg. Courtney Love is going after some of the most popular female artists on the scene and of all time, taking digs at everybody from Taylor Swift to Madonna. Well, let’s hear it, Miss World!
Courtney Love’s former band Hole made its mark by being one of the key female-led grunge acts of the ‘90s. But for her, today’s music is all just a copy of a copy. “It’s great that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but lots of them are becoming a cliché…Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there is just too much music. They’re all the same. If you play something on Spotify, you get bombarded with a lot of stuff that’s exactly the same.”
So, which modern acts make Courtney Love’s celebrity skin crawl? Taylor Swift for one. “Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.” As for Madonna herself – who is currently on her once-postponed Celebration Tour – Love admits she liked Desperately Seeking Susan but she and the Queen of Pop have a mutual disdain for one another.
Interestingly, some of Courtney Love’s other targets come due to loose ties with country music. “I like the idea of Beyoncé doing a country record because it’s about Black women going into spaces where previously only white women have been allowed, not that I like it much. As a concept, I love it. I just don’t like her music.” OK, but what about Lana Del Rey? Certainly somebody with a little more edge and rawness is an artist Courtney Love can appreciate. “I haven’t liked Lana since she covered a John Denver song, and I think she should really take seven years off. Up until ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ I thought she was great. When I was recording my new album, I had to stop listening to her as she was influencing me too much.” OK, there’s some appreciation there at least, but urging somebody to take a little under a decade off from the industry isn’t exactly high praise, either.
Courtney Love has never been one to shy away from her takes on people within the industry, proving to be one of the few women to slam Harvey Weinstein in public and even going after Brad Pitt, believing he got her fired from Fight Club as an act of vengeance for not being allowed to play Kurt Cobain.