"Nobody's Daughter" (2010), the aborted Courtney Love solo record released as a "Hole" album

The original “Nobody’s Daughter” album is superior. She calls them demos but they were indeed going to be the final product. What I recall happening was the songs either leaked online or the online reaction to them in the documentary was there were no hit songs.

So she wrote “Samantha” and then went down a rabbit hole of years of re-writing and reworking the songs while adding new ones. She brought on Michael Beinhorn who produced “Celebrity Skin” and he quit towards the end and she was left to finish producing the album on her own.

The final album was a mess. It sounded outdated and loud and her vocal production was terrible.

I imagine the same exact thing happened to “America’s Sweetheart”. She overthinks and doubts the work too much and ends up choosing the wrong collaborators to produce the final product.

She’s always so close but she gets in her own way.

R1 I totally agree. She is definitely her own worst enemy, in more ways than one. I do think, had the album been released as intended in 2006 (prior to all of the retooling), it would've fared much better. It seems she's gone the same route with her "Died Blonde" project. She has been talking about it for years, and a couple of months ago there was a leak of multiple tracks, but she's been radio silent about it. I am wondering if she's entirely scrapped that album and said "fuck it" at this point.

This is my favorite song from the album and my favorite version. Gut wrenching. It’s definitely the sequel or younger sister to Liz Phair’s “Shatter”. I think they’re both about being too “dirty” to be genuinely loved.

And the woman is a true lyricist. I love how the chorus is about “do the right thing for once in your life” and she’s singing to the man who betrayed her and ends the song with “there’s no context for once in my life” cause she’s betrayed herself.

Just love this song.

Nobody's daughter.... aborted, indeed.

R3 those Myspace sessions are legendary to me. "Samantha" had a totally different outro and was a different song at that point. Arguably better. Courtney was not well at that time though—I think she was still using. She certainly looks it. This was the period where she'd been a cocaine and crack addict, which went on for a number of years. I think she was still popping numerous pills (such as Xanax) around 2010 when the album finally came out , but I don't think she was doing street drugs anymore at that point.

Murderess!

There were some interesting choices made for the final product, not necessarily for the better though. For example, the guitar on the original studio recording of "Samantha" had a lot more reverb and the song had a different sound. On the final 2010 release, the guitar was heavily compressed in the mix, which gives it a more jarring and snappy consistency. It's much more attention-getting, but I don't like it as much.

I just never know what to make of her. Can't connect with her sound or her lyrics, but I can tell she's objectively talented.

Oh Courtney, you can't just go around your whole life with a big hole running through you.

I think the best song on the entire record is "Never Go Hungry". It's a rudimentary three-chord acoustic cut that is simple as hell, but she bleeds her soul on it and you can tell it comes from a place of true despair. Pretty much every other song on the record is extremely over-produced.

Courtney breaks my heart as a person. Behind all the chutzpah and assholery, there is a very hurt little girl in there that I think has never fully recovered from the emotional neglect she felt as a child. That's not to excuse her bad behavior, but I do think people grossly misunderstand her. I'd like to just give her a hug.

R2 The songs from “Died Blonde” leaked for about 72 hours back in April and they’ve all vanished. I wish I had saved them because a lot of them were solid.

I don’t think they’re scrapped. They all got into someone’s hands recently for a reason.

And the fact that they were taken down so quickly shows they must be for something.

R12 I hope so. I listened to some of them, and I liked what I heard. The only one I thought was ridiculous was the "Justice for Kurt" track, which she admitted during her Marc Maron podcast a couple years ago probably wouldn't be included because it would swallow the album. I think it was just a dumb song, which is rare for her.

R13 R13 I agree with all of this.

I think the biggest issue for her since the 2000s is she’s tried to write hit songs for the albums but her brand of rock is no longer commercially relevant.

Women of her era and age group focus on making full cohesive bodies of work - Bjork, Fiona, PJ Harvey aren’t trying to chase rock radio. I don’t even think they put out singles at this point.

“Mono” was a great attempt but “Skinny Little Bitch” was terrible. The original “Nobody’s Daughter” would have worked cause while critics said there were no stand outs, it would have still been a good album as a whole, which is what she doesn’t understand.

And she’s made attempts with “You Know My Name” and “Miss Narcissist” but no one wants a new single, they want a new album.

The one thing I’m a little disappointed in is her revival and redemption as an artist has been a slow climb.

Doja Cat recently covered “Celebrity Skin”, Miley had covered “Doll Parts”, she recently collaborated with 070 Shake with “Song to the Siren”.

I think it has brought on a new generation of younger fans who aren’t so tainted by the nasty Gen X / millennial view of her.

Even Yoko had some redemption in the 2000s with millennial hipsters who enjoyed her remix albums.

I would also like to hear the original America’s Sweetheart demos. I bet they’re far superior than the final album.

This is the 2001 version of “All The Drugs”. So much better than the album version.

R15 the cloud of Kurt Cobain will never fully leave her, unfortunately. If you look at virtually anything that's ever been posted by/about her on the internet, there is still a loud minority of dumbfucks who spend their time whinging about how she killed him, or at the very least, offer the copout that she "drove him to do it." Even among the people who aren't Cobain truthers, there is still a lot of ambivalence about her musical output being purely reliant on men. It is true that Kurt influenced her, and that Billy Corgan helped shape a lot of her biggest hits, but people rarely acknowledge the possibility that she also influenced Kurt, and that none of those Corgan songs would be anything without her either. She has always written her own lyrics and her stamp has been boldly placed on all of it.

What I find especially nasty about it all is that it completely denigrates the rest of her band members, relegating them to the status of mere puppets who had no creative input, which is just false. Hole would not have been what it was without Eric Erlandson especially, as co-wrote almost all of their songs, and was a foil for her when it came to playing guitar (she at one time played serviceably enough, but she's limited as an instrumentalist). He continually gets swallowed by the Kurt Cobain machine, as does Melissa Auf der Maur and Patty Schemel.

R18 totally agree. Slightly off topic but I love Melissa Auf der Maur’s solo albums.

R14 I think it's true that Courtney has been preoccupied with being "relevant" to her own detriment. You're right. She has often seemed hesitant to do anything unless she feels it will make a major splash, when the reality is that her brand is niche at this point. She still has a lot of fans and if she just put her head down and worked, I think something great could come out of it, but she's frankly not very disciplined.

I saw PJ Harvey live for the first time last year (I've seen Courtney live four times, for the record), and there is simply no comparison between someone like her and Courtney. PJ is a different breed, very dedicated to her craft and has a level of self-discipline that Courtney simply wasn't built with. And I say that as someone who is actually a bigger fan of Courtney's music than I am of PJ's. Courtney has a raw, unpredictable fire about her that makes her an exciting performer, plus she's smart and the music speaks for itself when she actually gets down to it. I think part of her problem is that she is so caught up in her head about her reputation and persona that she struggles to reach the finish line on everything she does. PJ doesn't have that issue, and has been more prolific because of it. With Courtney, there is a lot of cultural baggage that she carries, and she unfortunately lets it drag her down.