Celebrity Skin

Hole | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 8, 1998)
• Original Release Date: September 8, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Fontana Geffen
• ASIN: B00000AFWW
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (419 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,305 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sonically Amazing Masterpiece & Essential Modern Rock Record, March 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Celebrity Skin (Audio CD)

Celebrity Skin is a brilliant, shimmering guitar-driven album that showcases everything from divine hallucinations induced by orgasms ("Hit So Hard") to the posthumous gross commercialization of a certain nineties icon's musical legacy ("Playing Your Song") in a style that is as serious as it is tongue-in-cheek. Undoubtedly one of the best musical works of the nineties (a list which includes their 1994 breakthrough, Live Through This), Celebrity Skin blends variety, musical genius, lyrical fortitude, and unabashed irony. Prelegend lead vocalist Courtney Love isn't afraid to illuminate her songs with intense intimacy and a self-proclaimed warped view of California crumbling into the sea, while not so much as flinching about fans' frequent accusations of selling out (which 9/10 times indicates an artist has made a great record). The real hero here, however, may be Eric Erlandson, the songwriter and man behind the axe, who has an unsurpassed ability to create sickening-sweet atmospheric riffs and (without any warning) rip into them in cutthroat, perfect punk rock form. Boasting no throwaways and a sonically perfect soundscape, the sometimes underrated Celebrity Skin is a destined classic and a must-have for all serious guitar rockers, whether you like Love's provocative persona or not...

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An underrated album, October 14, 2005

By 

Daniel Maltzman (Arlington, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celebrity Skin (Audio CD)

Courtney Love sure made a big transformation between 1994 and 1998. She went from a grunge/alternative-rock icon, better-half of Kurt Cobain, to a glamorous fashion model and all-around celebrity. I don't mean this disapprovingly, but rather just stating a fact.

Hole's music reflected the change. Abandoning the grunge/alternative sound in favor of a glossy, popish one, Hole released their third album "Celebrity Skin" in the fall of 1998.

Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) joined Love and guitarist Erick Erldandson in creating the new album (Erldandson later revealed that he disapproved of Corgan's involvement).

Compared to Hole's first two albums "Pretty on the Inside" (1991) and "Live through This" (1994), "Celebrity Skin" is far more radio-friendly, with a far glossier production. Be that as it may "Celebrity Skin" is hardly an upbeat, cheerful album. Indeed, beyond the sunny exterior lies a distinctly dark album. Many of the album's songs were written about the death of Kurt Cobain. The sharp contrast between the album's dark tones and it's sunny, glossy exterior, makes for an intriguing listen.

While not everything works, most of the album is quite strong. The Def Leppard-like title track gets the CD off to a good start. "Awful" and "Hit so Hard" are quite melodic and tuneful. The radio-staple "Malibu" (written about Cobain's last stint at a rehabilitation center there) is one of the best singles from the late 90s. The edgy "Reason's to be Beautiful" and "Use Once and Destroy" don't quite work. They would have sounded great stripped down and raw, but don't really mesh with the glossy production. "Dying," works because of its sincerity, but is too popish for its own good. The downbeat "Northern Star" and the Go-Go's sounding "Boys on the Radio" are great. The latter very underrated. The lush "Heaven Tonight" is effective and keeps up the momentum. "Playing your Song" is one of the more aggressive songs on the album that actually works. The very bleak "Petals" makes for a good closing number.

It would have been easy for Hole to have written a "Live though this" part II, but instead the band chose to take a chance and go in a different direction. While "Celebrity Skin" does have its flaws, most of the songs work. If you bought "Celebrity Skin" back in 1998 and were disappointed, try giving it another spin, without trying to compare it "Live though this." You may be pleasantly surprised.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Use Often. Do Not Destroy., February 15, 2006

By 

M. G Watson "Miles Watson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celebrity Skin (Audio CD)

I want to start by saying I know jack-all about music. I am one of those silly sods who only knows what he likes, and this is a hell of an album.

As I recall, when "Celebrity Skin" hit the market it took a fairly heavy beating from all quarters. Rock critics found the album to be a bit too "glossy", fans made the usual accusations about "selling out" and the morons who write for music magazines and music television harped about its "disappointing" sales. Lost in all this furor was the fact that Hole had produced some bloody fine music if anyone cared to shut their gob and listen.

"Celebrity Skin", being a Courtney Love & Co. production, is obviously riddled with angst, cynicism, depression, desperation, melancholia and the occasional dose of rage. BFD, you say? Well, what distinguishes it from the whole punk-grunge-indie-alt mob doing exactly the same bloody thing is that Love's vocals, and more importantly the lyrics behind them, are truly first-rate. Some of the songs are so well-written they have to be read as text to be fully appreciated. "Use once and Destroy" is an excellent example of how lyrics can often do stand-in for first-class poetry:

It's the emptiness that follows you down
It's the ache inside when it all burns out
It's poisonous it muscles it aches
It's everything you had when it breaks
It's the emptiness that's all you have left
Too terrified of your frozen breath
It's a bitter mouth it's buttered and knived
It's the awful truth you fight for your life
It might as well it might as well hurt
It might as well it might as well
I went down to rescue you
I went all the way down
Fill your hungry wretched life
Here they come it's closing time
It's the bitter root it's twisted inside
It's the heart you used to have when it died
It's the emptiness it poisons it lies
It's everything that you'll never find

Like all great albums, this one manages to create an atmosphere which pervades each individual track, so that each cut, even when their moods differ, nevertheless feels like its part of a whole. The atmosphere, of course, is not exactly happy. As usual, Love sounds like she's cruising through a hefty dose of scrip drugs washed down with red wine; her mood is like a parabola and each individual emotion (despair, fury, futility) represents a point on its descending curve. Nevertheless, between the fusilades of angry and cynical words comes the occasional blast of humor ("Love hangs herself/with the bedsheets in her cell" is a good one; so is the line about "hooker/waitress/model/actress", which if you've been to L.A. is a pretty good description of the people). In fact, as the title implies, a good bit of "Celebrity Skin" is directed at the Music Industry, with all the tenderness and gentility of of a Molotov cocktail hurled through a window; but Love is not merely ranting about "the business"; it's the people that make it up she wants to bleed, and that clearly includes herself. I think to a certain extent, Love got caught between identities -- the grungy, angry, combat-booted one she started with and the Versace-wearing, Oscar-pandering, I'm-so-glad-to-be-here one she ended up with. The lyrics of the superb "Malibu" ("how'd you get so burned when you're barely on fire?") are probably more about her than she ever realized.

So why didn't it do better? Somewhere in the album there's a line about how "beauty blinds." This album is beautiful, but it's a vicious kind of beauty, like a left hook to the liver. What can I say? Love hurts baby.