Hole
Celebrity Skin
I cannot imagine Courtney Love and co. intended for Celebrity Skin to be Hole’s gayest album, but it’s got all the gloss and subtlety of a Disney Channel musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard. Also, you really haven’t lived until you've driven down a coastal highway on a gorgeous summer day with “Boys on the Radio” blaring from your car’s speakers. That’s kind of my idea of heaven. —JR
Celebrity Skin is the third studio album by American alternative rock band Hole, released worldwide on September 8, 1998 on Geffen Records and one day later in the United States on DGC Records. Hole intended the record to diverge significantly from their previous noise and grunge-influenced sound as featured on Pretty on the Inside (1991) and Live Through This (1994). In order to produce a cleaner, polished and more radio friendly power pop sound, the band hired producer Michael Beinhorn to record Celebrity Skin over a nine-month period that included the band recording in California, New York and the United Kingdom.
The album was the band's first studio release to feature bassist Melissa Auf der Maur following the death of former bassist Kristen Pfaff in June 1994. Unlike the material on the band's previous albums, the songs on Celebrity Skin were composed by a number of musicians instead of solely front woman Courtney Love and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson. The Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan contributed largely to the album's writing process and others, including Auf der Maur's former bandmate Jordon Zadorozny, contributed to its composition.
Though credited, drummer Patty Schemel did not actually play drums on this album, and was replaced with session drummer Deen Castronovo at the suggestion of producer Beinhorn. This issue created a rift between Schemel and the band, resulting in her dropping out of the tour and parting ways with the group. Celebrity Skin was the original band's last album before their disbandment in 2002.
Celebrity Skin was Hole's most commercially successful album. To date, it has sold over 1,400,000 copies in the United States alone, has been certified as platinum in Australia, Canada and the United States and garnered Hole a number one hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with the title track, "Celebrity Skin." Critical reaction to the album was largely positive and the album was listed on a number of publications' year-end lists in 1998.
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