A Hole reunion might not be happening, but Courtney Love is still gearing up to release new music. The musician gave an update on her upcoming album — and opened up about a startling 2019 health scare.
“Hey so, I’m gonna get off social stuff, ’cause I got to do some analog stuff for a few weeks,” she said in a video posted to Instagram. “A lot of you are asking where my record is at. It’s done. It’s kind of been done. It’s a really good record. I put a lot into it.”
She went on to discuss her move from Los Angeles to London in 2019 and an illness. Though she didn’t give exact details of what she suffered from, Love said that her body just “exploded” and that she was frequently in hospitals. “I almost died,” she said. “I lost all my hair. I was about 100 pounds. And they told me I was going to die. I didn’t believe them.”
Love then detailed events from when she was a child, when she’d “pattern interrupt the adults,” and how she thinks these memories influenced the record. “They’d say red was blue, and then I’d see blue. But blue was blue. So I’d gaslight myself that maybe they were right, and red was blue …and my head would explode. Like, fucking cope with that shit. I think some of you can relate to that.”
“Anyway,” she added, “I never really lost my ability to see that fucking red was red, despite them telling me that red was blue. And so when they said I was going to die, I just didn’t believe them. And somehow I got better. I’m healthy, which is amazing.”
She concluded the video by referencing Hole’s last album, 2010’s Nobody’s Daughter, and how much it flopped. “Spectacularly humbling,” she said. “Like, playing a Pizza Hut Park at 11 a.m. while Limp Bizkit was headlining with 30 Seconds to Mars. That shit’s humbling.”
While she figures out how to kick off her next era, she gave her perspective on how great music is right now: “People sound great live,” she said. “The girlies are amazing. Shit’s amazing. I just need to like, understand how to do this. I will be back.”
Fantastic Geese covers aside, Love has kept busy over the past year. She was recently the subject of Antiheroine, a documentary helmed by Edward Lovelace and James Hall, which premiered at Sundance back in Jan. And as her Instagram caption revealed, she’s been working with several collaborators on the upcoming album, from Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong to her longtime friend Michael Stipe. “I want to tour more than anything, and I want to sing,” she wrote. “That’s what keeps my soul and body happy.”
Swiftiephylus amator and Swiftiephylus taylorae, two of the bugs named after Taylor Swift because of their blonde and red coloring. Courtesy of Brad Balukjian, Ph.D.