All the Terrible Things Courtney Love Has Said About Other Musicians
Courtney Love vs. The World
In an April 2024 interview in the U.K. publication The Standard, musician Courtney Love took a swipe at Taylor Swift. “Taylor is not important,” the Hole frontwoman said. “She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.”
It’s hardly the first time Love has offered her less-than-complimentary opinion about other musicians. Indeed, she’s been doing it for over 30 years, even when she had no album or tour to promote with the resulting bad publicity. Here are a few more examples of things she’s said that are not entirely charitable about some of her fellow musicians over the years.
1. Lana Del Rey
In the April Standard article, Taylor Swift was not the only female artist to earn Love’s ire. She also mentioned Lana Del Rey, whom Love claimed she once liked. Then, the chanteuse did a cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which ruined everything, according to Love. “I haven’t liked Lana since she covered a John Denver song, and I think she should really take seven years off,” she said.
2. Beyoncé
If you thought country musicians were the only people taking issue with Beyoncé’s current country music album, “Cowboy Carter,” you were wrong. Courtney Love, who never played a lap steel guitar in her life, also had problems with it. “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 in the April Standard article. “As a concept, I love it. I just don’t like her music.”
3. Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna was the lead singer for Bikini Kill and a prominent figure in the feminist punk “Riot Grrrl” movement. According to the U.K. publication Far Out, Hanna and Love were involved in a 1995 altercation when Hole and Bikini Kill were touring as part of that year’s Lollapalooza Festival. While almost 25 years had passed, Love commented on Bikini Kill’s 2019 reunion with plenty of bile anyway. “Hanna is a good hype man,” Love said. “But her persona is such a [D.I.Y.] nonsense dilettante.”
4. Ted Nugent
In 2004, Love called into The Howard Stern Show to say that she had once had backstage relations with none other than the Motor City Madman himself, Ted Nugent, years before she had turned 18. She called into the show again in 2013, and while some of the details varied, the basic story stayed the same. Nugent, who has written such songs as “I Am a Predator” and “Jailbait,” denied her claims.
5. Olivia Rodrigo
Since Courtney Love is almost 40 years older than pop singer Olivia Rodrigo, it’s worth wondering how she got on Love’s radar in the first place. But indeed, she did, and Love accused Rodrigo of using an image for the cover of her 2021 album “Sour” that was too similar to the cover of Hole’s “Live Through This.” While it’s a matter of opinion whether that’s true, Love characterized it as theft, saying, “Stealing an original idea and not asking permission is rude… this was bad form… I’m honorable as [expletive deleted] to my fellow artists, and I expect the same.”
6. Trent Reznor
In 2024, Rolling Stone said that “according to multiple reports,” Love had been romantically linked to Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor after both bands had toured together in 1994. While there’s no solid information confirming that the two were ever an item, Love came out publicly anyway in 1995 in SPIN magazine with a comment that certainly suggested that the pair may have had relations. “Don’t call your band Nine Inch Nails if you have a three-inch one,” she said.
7. Madonna
Unlike some people on this list, Love’s problems with Madonna originated in 1995 on live television for the whole world to see. At the MTV Video Music Awards that year, Madonna was being interviewed by Kurt Loder when Courtney Love threw a makeup compact at her. Love then began going on about how she wanted to work in a hospital, which Madonna interrupted by saying Love would have access to “a lot of available drugs.” OOF. It was a good zinger, and it led Love to say of Madonna, “I don’t like her, and she doesn’t like me.”
8. Gwen Stefani
In 2010, Love called into The Howard Stern Show again, this time disclosing that she had relations with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale while he was still married to No Doubt singer and solo artist Gwen Stefani. She could have let it go at that point, but in a 2013 interview with ABC News, she waded back into the muck and mire by suggesting that Stefani was a mere puppet being manipulated by Rossdale, who secretly operated her marionette strings and orchestrated her success. “I would’ve never really bet on Gwen,” she said. “[Rossdale] runs the Gwen show.”
9. Dave Grohl
Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl has been on the receiving end of a lot of Love’s public vitriol over the years, and he’s given it back as well as he’s gotten. Rather than list the myriad of uncomplimentary statements that have gone back and forth, we’ll say that in 2012, Love accused Grohl of propositioning Frances Bean Cobain, her daughter with late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Grohl denied it, but no one pushed back harder than Frances herself, who was then 19 years old, and said, “I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way… Twitter should ban my mother.”
10. Billy Corgan
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was romantically linked to Courtney Love prior to her marrying Kurt Cobain. Corgan and Love remained friends and worked together on Hole’s 1999 album Celebrity Skin, but for many years, the two were embroiled in a feud that saw each lob volleys at the other. In a 2014 interview with BBC6 Music, Love was asked if she had a favorite Smashing Pumpkins song, which she answered by saying their best songs were those that were about her, and when that stopped being the case, Smashing Pumpkins stopped being popular. “He stopped writing about me and then he stopped making hits,” she said.
11. Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love have had a long and contentious relationship. Most of the time, it seems as though Manson is the party more frequently dishing out insults, though, to be fair, Love has given him plenty of pushback for his statements. In a 2015 interview with Esquire, Manson said that she had been mad at him for not engaging in relations with her, causing her to fire back on the platform formerly known as Twitter, that she had always thought he preferred the company of gentlemen. However, if he still wanted to engage in the physical act of love with her, there was room in her social calendar. “Im free Fri from 1:15 to 1:18 gives us plenty time 4 a smoke too x," she said in response.
This story was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.
