Celebrity Skin is less about those in the spotlight than those who get lost in the shadows along the way: the sold-out sluts, self-destructive pop boys, and “might-have-been”s, all the “beautiful garbage” littering US 101. The dedication reads, “To all the stolen water of Los Angeles and to anyone who ever drowned,” while the back cover pays homage to a doomed Ophelia. The album opens with three jet-engine chords and a wink at Love’s own notoriety. “Oh, make me over/I’m all I wanna be,” she snarls over a buzzing riff. “A walking study/In demonology.” Full of “yeah-ah-ahs” and glittery blown-out guitars, “Celebrity Skin” offers a backstage tour of Hollywood. Love plays the wilted starlet whose soul was her price of entry: “You want a part of me?/Well, I’m not selling cheap.”
On Celebrity Skin, Hole cranked the dial on their “internal AM radio” and channeled 1970s California AOR tunes. Grunge was on its way out, and besides, Hole had always been proud pop fans. Back in 1989, Erlandson responded to an ad Love placed that read, “I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac.” Hole had spent two albums wiping the muck away until Celebrity Skin emerged, as polished as they would ever get.
Love initially struggled to get the record off the ground and needed someone to light a creative (and competitive) spark in her, so she called up Billy Corgan. (In addition to being Love’s ex-boyfriend, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman had recommended Auf der Maur after seeing her band play in Montreal.) Corgan has co-arrangement credits on five songs, including the title track, and was initially announced as the album’s executive producer. But he left the project to work on the Pumpkins’ Adore, and Hole hired Michael Beinhorn, known for his work with Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Ozzy Osbourne.
Though Hole’s sound had expanded, their bite remained razor sharp. Case in point: “Awful,” a Trojan horse critique of the music industry. Atop a power-pop interpolation of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” Love calls out executives eager to exploit “all the girls like you.” Bubbly like cherry cola—and are those notes of Neil Diamond or Unrest?—the song’s carbonation goes flat ahead of the final verse, as Love growls, “Oh, just shut up, you’re only 16.” But “Awful” ends with rousing defiance: “If the world is so wrong/Yeah, you can break them all with one song.” “Reasons to Be Beautiful,” co-arranged with Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s, comments on vanity and self-loathing. “Miles and miles of perfect sin/I swear, I said, I fit right in,” Love chants. “I fit right in your perfect skin/I cannot breathe.” Delivered with pinkprick precision, each shifting verse seems to pirouette on the head of a needle.
On the title track, Love describes a woman who has obliterated everything she kissed, and indeed, desire is a corrosive force on Celebrity Skin. “The one I love, I should destroy/My sweet tooth has burned a hole,” Love croons on the dreamy “Hit So Hard.” The conflation of violence and ecstasy echoed by the chorus—“He hit so hard/I saw stars/He hit so hard/I saw God”—evokes “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” a song Hole had covered. Sublime obliteration is a recurring theme. “Our love is quicksand/So easy to drown”; “I look at him and drown.” “When the water is too deep/You can close your eyes and really sleep tonight,” goes the siren song “Boys on the Radio,” a twinkly homage to troubled musicians Evan Dando, Brian Wilson, and Jeff Buckley after the latter drowned in 1997. “Down by the sea/Is where you drown your scars,” Love sings on “Malibu,” and she sounds radiant atop washes of golden guitars singed with melancholy. “Malibu” pleads with a bright burnout to find salvation, but he’s already doomed. As the sun sets over an ocean of angels, Love’s protagonist walks into the Pacific, the differences between self-destruction and salvation washed away by waves.
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