Lead singer Courtney Love may be addressing her late husband, Kurt Cobain, on the sympathetic “Malibu” (“How’d you get so desperate? . . . Oh, come on be alive again”). Stardom is empty and deceitful according to “Celebrity Skin.”
“Hit So Hard” blurs the line between love and violence. The heaven Hole refers to on “Heaven Tonight”appears to be sex. Self-loathing and nihilism slither in and out of these songs, pausing just long enough to strike at fans and inject their hopeless poison. Cynicism and despair inhabit lyrics like, “Now I’m just stupid/I’m so awful” (“Awful”), “I am so dumb . . . I know that love is dead/You’ve come to bury me” (“Dying”), “The world is a whore” (“Petals”), “I knew I’d cherish all my misery alone” (“Northern Star”), “Emptiness–that’s all you have left” (“Use Once & Destroy”). “Playing Your Song” blurts the f-word. Ms. Love claims to be “a walking study in demonology” on the title track.
It’s one thing to sympathize with the widow of a suicidal rock star. It’s another to ingest her pain. Keep teens away from this deep, dark, dangerous Hole.
