Courtney Love unimpressed by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé
Despite her long-standing advocacy for women in rock music, Courtney Love holds little admiration for today’s most influential female artists, including Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and Beyoncé.
Love, a San Francisco native and founder of the grunge band Hole, was candid about her views on the current crop of pop stars in a recent interview with the Evening Standard.
“Taylor is not important,” she emphasized. “She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.”
For Love, that is a pretty low bar as she makes clear she doesn’t hold Madonna in high regard, despite the pop star’s recent tour celebrating her 40-year career following a near-fatal bacterial infection.
“I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me,” Love said. “I loved ‘Desperately Seeking Susan,’ but for the city of New York as much as her.”
This year’s Coachella headliner Del Rey has also fallen out of favor with Love.
“I haven’t liked Lana since she covered a John Denver song, and I think she should really take seven years off,” Love said. “Up until ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ I thought she was great. When I was recording my new album, I had to stop listening to her as she was influencing me too much.”
Even Beyoncé, who recently gained acclaim for her foray into country music with “Cowboy Carter,” fails to impress the rock singer.
“I like the idea of Beyoncé doing a country record because it’s about Black women going into spaces where previously only white women have been allowed, not that I like it much,” she said. “As a concept, I love it. I just don’t like her music.”
Interestingly, the interview coincides with the launch of Love’s new eightpart radio series, “Courtney Love’s Women,” airing on BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Sounds, intended to celebrate women in music. Sharing personal stories, Love reflects on her tumultuous journey and life with her husband Kurt Cobain of Nirvana before he died in 1994.
But Love, who moved to London in 2019, does praise some musicians, including Stevie Nicks, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Debbie Harry, Julie London and Joni Mitchell.
“It’s great that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but lots of them are becoming a cliché,” she said. “Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there is just too much music. They’re all the same. If you play something on Spotify, you get bombarded with a lot of stuff that’s exactly the same.”
Love is currently putting the finishing touches on her memoir, “The Girl With the Most Cake,” and reportedly wrapping up her longawaited solo album.