Now getting slagged at AMG: Courtney Love's latest.

Gee, it kind of looks like maybe Kurt did ghost write most of Live Through This.

Now playing: Hec-u-mix, which is great fun.

Does Knut ever post around here these days? I know he's large with the Sarah Harmer love, and she has a new album coming out tomorrow. She also has a little acoustic set on CBC Radio3. (Warning: that link is to an all-Flash interface that is death to dial-ups, and generally kind of annoying.)

Does Knut ever post around here these days?

It's been a while. I think he's been real busy with his Dogtown Review.

Gee, it kind of looks like maybe Kurt did ghost write most of Live Through This.

I would have been really angry at you for suggesting this ten years ago, and would have given you a full dose of 15-year-old grrrrl feminism.

But now? Especially if you listen to In Utero and then Live Through This and note the common lyrical obsessions?

Um, yeah. I wish it wasn't the case, because I still love what Courtney seemed to represent a decade ago, but yeah.

I would have been really angry at you for suggesting this ten years ago, and would have given you a full dose of 15-year-old grrrrl feminism.

Ten years ago, Courtney got the benefit of the doubt from me. Not so much anymore. Though I still like reading her writing and interviews.

Gee, it kind of looks like maybe Kurt did ghost write most of Live Through This.

No, really?

(Forgive me for being so snarky. It's a reflexive action where Ms. Love is concerned for most Seattle-ites.)

Though I still like reading her writing and interviews.

I used to like reading them, but now... I just end up feeling sad for her, and especially sorry for her daughter.

I do think she probably wrote "Rock Star," ("When I went to school/in Olympia") because it's so much more Courtney's obsessions than Kurt's. Everything else on the CD I'm not so sure about.

But to be fair? I still remember Hole's appearance at Lollapalooza '95 as being one of the best performances I ever saw, and certainly the best festival performance.

I disagree -- there's a lot of thematic and musical consistency between Pretty on the Inside and Live Through This. Of course there's some influence -- they were married -- but I hear a lot more about being the freaked-out new mother of an infant on LTT than I do on IU, for example.

She was really good, and even Celebrity Skin had its moments, but now she's behind the times and out of control, and all the bullshit Ryan Adams-y "being fucked up brings you artistic greatness" nonsense has boomeranged on her, as it does on everyone. That doesn't mean she didn't do her own best work.

That doesn't mean she didn't do her own best work.

At the very least, I feel like she drew more inspiration out of Kurt's presence than she's able to generate on her own. Which would put her in roughly the same class as Robbie Robertson and The Band who lost it rather completely (as songwriters) once they were out of Dylan's immediate orbit.

But frankly, I don't think Courtney's a plagiarist - but just a thief the way some artists are. She took what was useful for her. I remember reading Kurt talking about her trying to steal the riff for "Heart Shaped Box" and that seems entirely credible and in character for her. I think in her warped little brain the equation was, "Well, I inspired that song so part of that song belongs to me anyway."

She did that in other ways too - she flat out appropriated the kinderwhore look from Kat Bjellland, took a lot of her stage moves from Paula Pierce (Pandoras). I've heard that kind of stuff about Courtney her entire career and I don't think it was sour grapes or resentment about a strong woman figure. She takes - that's what she does.