(Credits: Alamy)
For better or worse, Courtney Love quickly became one of the biggest pop culture figures of the 1990s when her relationship with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain went public. Hurtling from relative obscurity straight into the highest echelons of rock society, the implications were seismic for both Love’s personal life and her career, not that she had much time to take stock of that, because the hurricane train of fame just kept on flying down the line.
Indeed, as had happened so many times before in music history, Love fulfilled the archetype of the villainised female romance interest, the result of which was not only a higher status profile for her band Hole, but a legion of acerbic sets of eyes all casting their judgment over her every move. It meant that, no matter her true feelings on the subject, Love just had to learn to walk the walk of a rock icon, only really as she was beginning to crawl.
She reflected on this herself in a 2015 interview, saying: “Just marrying [Cobain] created a mythology around me that I didn’t expect for myself, because I had a very controlled, five-year plan about how I was going to be successful in the rock industry. Marrying Kurt, it all kind of went sideways in a way that I could not control, and I became seen in a certain light–a vilified light that made Yoko Ono look like Pollyanna – and I couldn’t stop it.”
All of this to say, essentially, that the 1990s were a blazing but turbulent time for Love, and as such, whether in a good or a bad way, she will always be synonymous with the culture of the decade. On American shores, it was an era of grounded grunge beats, sonic fire, and lyrical mysticisms that set the country apart even as Britain’s own rock train rumbled into force, meaning that for once, the split of quality on both sides of the Atlantic was more or less even.
For Love, regarding her own favourite records of the 1990s, it almost goes without saying that Nirvana’s most prolific efforts make up the top drawer, with Nevermind and In Utero specifically among her most-loved albums. Despite this, however, the former is an album that Love has rarely ever publicly opened up her thoughts on, aside from an interview with the LA Times in 2021 to celebrate its 30th anniversary, in which she said it was a “miracle” piece of work.
Noting that: “He [Cobain] was so happy when this record was done. He now had agency. He had the courage to change both himself and the world, and with success he became emboldened,” the wheels that put the explosive grunge scene into motion were more than clear, which soon brought other industrial efforts, like Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, to the foreground.
Whether she was purposefully alluding to this or not, the concept of The Downward Spiral drew some tragic parallels to the trajectory of Cobain’s own life, released mere weeks before he died in April 1994. But with iconic tunes in its midst like ‘March of the Pigs’ and ‘Closer’, The Downward Spiral was indeed the marker of a stratospheric rise for Nine Inch Nails, in many ways taking the baton based on the groundwork that Nirvana had laid before them.
But this is not to say that the heights of American ‘90s rock fully reigned supreme in Love’s mind, as over on British shores in 1992, PJ Harvey was in the mood for making waves with her classic debut Dry. The idiosyncrasies of Harvey’s sound instantly turned heads and, in Love’s case, completely enamoured her to the singer. She previously said that, “The one rock star that makes me know I’m shit is Polly Harvey. I’m nothing next to the purity that she experiences,” although, having said that, the pair’s relationship has become somewhat rockier in recent years after Love branded Harvey “rude” for not responding to her request to collaborate.
Love has never shied from her fair share of controversy over the years, but nevertheless, her top album picks of the 1990s represent a time in her life that was shaped by the most significant influences, Cobain and the likes of Nine Inch Nails and PJ Harvey, not least among them. It may now be three decades in the past, but in some sense, in the heart of those like Love, the spirit of the decade will live on forever.
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