Have you ever listened to an artist, only to later find out that they aren’t the best person? If you’re anything like me, this probably bothers you. I mean, who would want a musician they like to actually be bad? I think of people like Lana Del Rey and Courtney Love and acknowledge their good music, but it’s always been a question of whether or not I should like it.
“Separating the art from the artist” tends to be what people call listening to musicians who have said or done bad things. As I said before, this is how I feel about Courtney Love, more specifically Hole, her 90s grunge band.
Courtney Love is not a good person. I think that most people either know her from Hole, or as the wife of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. And, no, I don’t think she killed him, that’s not why I don’t like her. She’s racist, transphobic, and just overall offensive, and there are too many stories and clips of these being proven. I mean, she probably doesn’t care about this stuff, because she’s always been like that. I also don’t like her due to her hatred of 90s riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna, but that’s besides the point.
For me, separating art from the artist is hard. I don’t like Lana Del Rey because she’s done some pretty questionable things, but I don’t enjoy a lot of her music anyway so that doesn’t affect me as much. The thing is, I know that Hole is a good band. I know that they made good music. I listen to it pretty much everyday. For a long time, I really did try to avoid Hole like it was the plague, because I really didn’t want to end up liking it.
I remember talking to my friends about my dilemma, and not many of them saw this as a big deal. I don’t want to support a band whose lead singer is, well, Courtney Love, but they made the argument that the band is old and they probably aren’t profiting a lot from my, some random teenager who wasn’t even alive while they were making music, streams on Apple Music. I’m not sure how many other people have this problem, or if anyone does at all. I just know that I’m like this, and it’s a really big problem I have.
I do know that people who listen to Hole acknowledge that they don’t support Courtney Love, so that’s good. For me, I just can’t help but think about all the bad things she’s done, that would need to be a whole separate article, every time I solely listen to her voice.