Courtney Love was the most recent guest on critic Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs That Explain the '90s podcast, which sees Harvilla go into the cultural context and history (personal or otherwise) of a defining '90s song. Harvilla's guests are usually fellow critics or somewhat-less-famous celebrities, so having Love on the podcast must've felt like a major get.
Love called in to the podcast to discuss Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" — Harvilla had already gone deep on Hole and "Doll Parts" on a previous episode — and she engaged in a long, wide-ranging and sometimes wild conversation that included talking about the time she bought Kurt Cobain a Leonard Cohen lyric book and told him to step his lyrics up, the origin of Cobain's feud with Eddie Vedder and a whole bunch of other stuff including drug use, the riot grrrl scene and getting kicked out of a house by Billy Corgan's girlfriend.
Most interestingly, Love also brought out some of Cobain's unused "Smells Like Teen Spirit" lyrics, which she sang a cappella. Some of these lyrics were published in Cobain's journals, but some are totally new (well, new to us):
Come out and play
Make up the rules
I know I hope to buy the truth
Who will be the king and queen of all the outcasted teens?
We're so lazy and so stupid
Blame our parents and the cupids
A deposit for a bottle
Stick it inside, no role model
Another version goes like this:
We merge ahead, this special day
This day giving amnesty to sacrilege
A denial, and from strangers
A revival, and from favors
Here we are now, we're so famous
Here we are now, entertain us
Love goes on to say that she wishes Cobain would've kept the lyric: "Who will be the king and queen / of all the outcasted teens," because it "would've helped my life a little bit better, taking on the shit that me and my daughter have," which might be a reference to the still-ongoing backlash that Love faced after Cobain's death.
Check out the podcast below.
Love called in to the podcast to discuss Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" — Harvilla had already gone deep on Hole and "Doll Parts" on a previous episode — and she engaged in a long, wide-ranging and sometimes wild conversation that included talking about the time she bought Kurt Cobain a Leonard Cohen lyric book and told him to step his lyrics up, the origin of Cobain's feud with Eddie Vedder and a whole bunch of other stuff including drug use, the riot grrrl scene and getting kicked out of a house by Billy Corgan's girlfriend.
Most interestingly, Love also brought out some of Cobain's unused "Smells Like Teen Spirit" lyrics, which she sang a cappella. Some of these lyrics were published in Cobain's journals, but some are totally new (well, new to us):
Come out and play
Make up the rules
I know I hope to buy the truth
Who will be the king and queen of all the outcasted teens?
We're so lazy and so stupid
Blame our parents and the cupids
A deposit for a bottle
Stick it inside, no role model
Another version goes like this:
We merge ahead, this special day
This day giving amnesty to sacrilege
A denial, and from strangers
A revival, and from favors
Here we are now, we're so famous
Here we are now, entertain us
Love goes on to say that she wishes Cobain would've kept the lyric: "Who will be the king and queen / of all the outcasted teens," because it "would've helped my life a little bit better, taking on the shit that me and my daughter have," which might be a reference to the still-ongoing backlash that Love faced after Cobain's death.
Check out the podcast below.
