America's Sweetheart [CLEAN]

Courtney Love

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 10, 2004)
• Original Release Date: February 10, 2004
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Clean
• Label: Virgin Records Us
• ASIN: B00014K636
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #407,614 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Does a "clean" Courtney Love album make sense to you?, July 3, 2004

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Undoubtedly it is because I watched the film "Sylvia" right before I first heard this album, but when listening to "America's Sweetheart" it suddenly struck me that the story of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain is the flip side of what happened with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. She is talented but he is more famous and her first great success is overshadowed by a suicide. You can read this as an argument that if Hughes had been the one to end his life that Plath would still have achieved prominence, because what matters in this world is that you get people to look at or listen to your work. It has been a decade since Cobain ended his life with a shotgun blast and Hole's "Live Through This" achieved acclaim as much through the notoriety of its apparent prescience as its powerful punk sound. Since then the widow Cobain's career has been a long line of tabloid scandals with not much to show on the musical side of the ledger. Well, boys and girls, that is all over now.

Here we have the "clean" version of "America's Sweetheart," but I have to say that the idea of cleaning up Courtney Love's songs for public consumption strikes me as pretty absurd. You think mommy plays the clean version for Frances Bean? More importantly, does excising a few bad words dilute the meaning of these songs? Not really, but just on principle that has to cost this one a rating star. But even cleaned up for the kiddies it is clear right from the opening blast of "Mono" that Love announces she is back with a vengeance and the primary target is her dearly departed husband:

Hey yeah we had everything
Vinyl in mono
And we looked the other way man
We were so dumb
Is this the part in the book that you wrote
Where I gotta come and save the day
Did you miss me
Did you miss me

By the time Love howls in the chorus "Oh god you owe me one more song/ So I can prove to you that/ I'm so much better than him" it becomes clear these songs are going to wallow in the wretched existence that has been her life for the past decade. She might be hurt, but she is also angry, and she proceeds to eviscerate just about every aspect of her "pornorific" life from to the "hard drugs and bad luck" to the "lots and lots of meaningless sex." The only thing she does not touch upon is motherhood, which simply proves that that by not singing about her daughter she gives away the most sacred part of her life. But as the opening chords of "I'll Do Anything" pointedly remind us, "America's Sweetheart" always comes back to the specter of Cobain and as the lyrics of "Hold On to Me" prove you do not have to go digging far to get the point:

Hey, this life is never fair
The angels that you need are never there
But sometimes he comes to me
In the dead of winter, dead of night
He's all that I can see.

Working with songwriting collaborator Linda Perry the sound of "America's Sweetheart" is not as raw as what Love and Hole produced for "Live Through This." But the music just provides the energy for Love to get through the public exorcism of these rambling lyrics whose coherence comes primarily out of her personal pain. This is not surprising given that she has had a decade of being beaten over the head with the reality that she is the Jackie Kennedy of the Grunge generation, so it is not like there is any place or any reason to hide. Now she has found a note of grace in having produced an album on the same level of "Live Through This." Her talent is not a fluke, just her fate. The question is now whether she has anything to say beyond what is fueled by the anger at her husband's betrayal. Plath never wrote another poem, but Love is going to have to follow up this album at some point. What was implicit in 1994's "Live Through This" is made explicit in 2004's "America's Sweetheart" but it is hard to believe she can really sing about him forever. She will never be as influential as Cobain (nobody that influential ever tries to be that influential), but if she really wants to be more than a musical footnote to his legacy the next album is going to be the one that decides if she has any sort of chance.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Album of 2004 - Courtney Love's Finest Album, November 9, 2006

By	J. Stewart (Hattiesburg, MS USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This CD picks up were Celebrity Skin left off, with one delightful surprise, it is twice as loud. It is nice to hear a real Rock N Roll cd in an age when wannabe pop stars like The Strokes and Britney Spears are spitting out pop garbage and lardassed record executives are promoting them as Rock, or even more scary, "Newer Rock". Not since 1994's "Live Through This" has Love produced such a cd with both pop rock appeal and some guitar work loud enough to wake the dead. The songs are as well crafted as on "Celebrity Skin", and this CD seems to start where "Celebrity Skin" left off, with more punktastic appeal. The CD opens with "Mono" a sonic punch, similar to "Celbrity Skin"s
opening track "Celebrity Skin". With the second track, it's another Sonic assult with "But Julian Im A Little Bit Older Than You". The next two songs "Hold On To Me" and "Sunset Strip" sound like they could have been on Celebrity Skin with that perfect mix of acoustic and electric edge that only Courtny Love or Robert Plant and Jimmy Page really can pull off without a hitch. "All The Drugs" is another sonic tune your sure to groove to. "Almost Golden" is classic Hole - Love acoustic electric style song but with one catch, Courtney Love has evolved her style since Hole and you can appreciate it with this tune. The rest of the CD continues with this sweet and loud mix of stories about life and mixing up the acoustic/ electric and electric/sonic masterpieces. One of my favorites is "I'll Do Anything", a classic Courtney Love style song with sprinklings of Courtney's own self styled catchprhases here and there. "Zeplin Song" seems to be a hilarious story about that pesky guitar miestro that everyone knows who tries to be Page, EVERY NIGHT, and another one of my favorite tracks "Hello", a great upbeat rock song with some sexy lyrics. This CD is strong, loud, delicate, and consistant with its delivery from the first to the last track. All the nerds that gave this CD less than stellar ratings need to get off thier buts and move out of thier moms basements or go to a punk show or something, because only the most square anti-feminist macho males seemed to be irritated by this CD! And Linda Perry?, the producer who did not seem like this CD at all, well what do you expect from the Britney Spears camp, an endorsement? Matt Serletic did a fantiastic job of producding this album, it is as professional as any Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones album. This CD is as loud as THE VOICE OF GOD! Don't let any little greasy four eyed computer geek nerd's review or any Britney Spears fan make your choices for you, not with this CD! Many critics are NERDS anyway, they hate Punk Rock! If you liked Hole, you will love this CD. If you like Courtney Love, you will love this CD. It is almost 2007 and in the last 7 years I still have yet to see another rock and roll cd that kicks out the jams like this one! Five Stars Courtney you came through for us yet again!

5.0 out of 5 stars Such a great great album, July 10, 2008

By	Jeremy Gloff (Tampa, Fl United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Length:: 2:17 Mins