Celebrity Skin

To the surprise of no one, music was a huge part of my teenage years and still is, to a degree. Between recording songs off of the radio’s Top 40 countdown or watching hours upon hours of music videos, listening to music occupied so much of my day-to-day life.

I would walk to school with battery-powered speakers connected to my anti-skip CD player for my walk to and from school and listen to music in class whenever the teacher would allow. We’d unsafely download songs with programs like Napster, Bearshare, and Limewire, and stare at the Windows Media Player animations. We’d have are personal stereos prepped with a blank cassette in the tape deck with Record/Play and Pause held now so when the song we loved came on, we could release the pause and instantly record the song to listen to later.

I would also keep MTV on the television as I slept. Interestingly, the same song would play at about the same time every morning, serving as a secondary alarm clock. Nearly every day started with this song and led to the album becoming one of my favorite albums of all time. The band was Hole, and the song (and the album) was Celebrity Skin.

“Oh, make me over!”

The album starts the same way my mornings did. The song “Celebrity Skin” opens with this rush of sound before a guitar plays and Courtney Love sings “Oh make me over! I’m all I wanna be. A walking study in demonology.” I didn’t know what she’s getting at, but it’s a hell of a way to start the day!

The song is basically a reflection of the dark side of being a celebrity; the public persona versus the private feelings. In a sense, the coming to terms that fame and fortune isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The music is energetic and to this day can pop my out of bed ready to start my day.

“Swing low, Sweet Cherry, make it awful”

Fun fact: I was in high school and looking for inspiration for writing via music. I let this song play and came up with the very first idea I had for a novel. It’s still deep in my back pocket because, at the time, being an author was a pipe-dream. Boy, if I could sit down with 16-year-old me…

…anyway, as with most of the album, the music is fun, as the alternative scene was in the late-90s. The down side to having alternative music being so “upbeat and fun” is that you never understand the impact of the lyrics.

The song starts like this:

Swing low
Sweet cherry, make it awful
It's your life
It's your party, it's so awful
Let's start a fire
Let's start a riot, yeah, it's awful
It was punk
Yeah, it was perfect, now it's awful

For the subject, everything is just fine. Life is good, it’s fun, you’re happy. Everything’s great. And then -

They know how to break all the girls like you
And they rob the souls of the girls like you
And they break the hearts of girls

Now, the subject is used and abused.

Swing low
Cherry, cherry, yeah, it's awful
He's drunk
He tastes like candy, he's so beautiful
He's so deep
Like dirty water, God, he's awful
You're lost
Oh, where's your daddy? It's so awful

Guy seemed nice. He seemed sweet. Not so much. The rest of the song tells that tragic story of young woman being used and abused for the sake of fame and it’s a tragic song, but as aforementioned, it’s hidden by the up-tempo sounds of the band. Nothing too heavy but late-90s alt-rock.

And yes, I do plan on writing that story someday!

Interestingly, this is a common theme throughout the album - how fame will ruin you on the deepest level and take everything that makes you YOU and treat it like a commodity to be traded, bought, and/or sold. Another example of this story told is “Reasons To Be Beautiful”.

This is one of the songs where the music stands out more than lyrics. There is just something in how the guitar plays the melody of this song, particularly in the chorus. It’s hard to clarify, but there isn’t something in the music of this song that, in a way, gives me a reasons to feel beautiful. At the end, it’s just the vocals and one guitar and it’s lovely.

There’s another song on this album is that just a beautiful ballad...

…but first…

It’s sound like space lasers as “Use Once & Destroy” begins. The bass and the drums follow before the rest of the band fills in.

Not gonna lie - it makes for a great wrestling entrance song, in my opinion, and that’s a lot about why I love this song.

I think many wrestling fans can agree that there is something special about a proper wrestling entrance song. It has to have a unique opening so that there is no confusion as to who is coming out and something about the body of the song that “surrounds you”, in a way. The energy from the song feels like the energy from a crowd to which you’d draw strength.

Then there’s the chorus. Something about how the words are sung, more the cadence than the vocals themselves.

“I went DOWN
To RES-
-cue YOU. I went
ALL
The WAY
DOWN.
Fill your HUN-
-gry WRET-
-ched LIFE
Here they COME
It’s CLOS-
-ing TIME”

Each line showing how the lyrics were broken up and the capitalized words show which words or sounds were elongated. That cadence resonates with me. Also the way the song ends goes perfectly into --

Acoustic guitar.

“And I cry and no one can hear inhale…”

“Northern Star”, the aforementioned “other ballad”. is such a beautifully structured song. First, as you’re listening track to track, “Use Once & Destroy” just stops. The guitar comes alone, plays a measure or two, and Courtney Love sings. Now, I hadn't mentioned it thus far, but Courtney Love’s singing voice is kinda nasally. This gives it a whiny twangy sound. With just the guitar and the occasional chime, there’s emotional poured into this entire first verse and chorus.

During the second verse, we a drum briefly joins the fray before sticking around by the end of the verse, but not the whole verse. It’s mostly the acoustic and Love’s voice. Some support from the drum and some other sounds sprinkled in.

After an interlude, the lyrics are belted out and whatever it is or was that Love was feeling in that moment is truly felt more than heard.

I love this song. So much so, typically if I’m listening to the album straight through, I have a tendency to put the player on Repeat One when this song comes on and listen to it for hours.

It’s hard to change the song now.

I didn’t know whether of not to just wrap up this essay or mention one more song. Then the beginning of “Playing Your Song” started.

We close here.

The song’s opening sound very Indian (as in from India) in its styling. Drums kick in and we’re off on another song that sounds like an entrance theme. Once again, we’re looking at lyrics about someone that ‘had it all’, or more apropos, someone that had been living inside “celebrity skin”.

Hey, you, you're way ahead of me
You're drunk on apathy, you burned right out
Hey, you, you're just a cripple now
We sell for millions now, they sold you out

And, oh, I had to tell them you were gone
I had to tell them they were wrong
And now they're playing your song

Telling the subject that they’re bored, burned out, and basically old news, ‘they’ have sold them out and is just making money off their work while leaving them high and dry,and now they’re playing your song.

The song closes like this:

Hey, you, don't you dare blame me
You trusted everything, they sold you out
Hey, you, now when they call it cool
It's just so mean and cruel, they sold you out

And, oh, they bought and sold it all, it's gone
And every note of it is wrong
And now they're playing your song
Yeah, yeah, yeah
And, oh, they've bought and sold it all, it's gone
They've taken it and built a mall
And now they're playing your song

This entire album plays like a pop-rock warning to anyone fooled by the glitz and glamour of the music (or movie) industry. Being recorded after Love’s stint in Hollywood acting in “The People vs Larry Flynt” may have influenced this theme as she was rebuilding after the death of her husband Kurt Cobain.

This album came out in 1998, a time when I was finding myself at the beginning of my high school career. My taste in music was shifting, my views on the world were forming, and what would become the most important factor of this time in my life, though I didn’t understand to what degree at the time, I was learning what it means to be The Moon. That is the influence of this album and that’s why this is one of my favorite albums.