When we talk about Hole in the present day, we look back with a sense of admiration, praise and celebration for the songwriting talents of Courtney Love. During their initial run as a band in the 1990s, however, things couldn’t have been more different.
Regularly underappreciated as a result of the music industry’s rampant misogyny, the often controversial and strained public relationship between Love and her husband, Kurt Cobain, often led to people unjustly criticising her and her work, either stating that she wasn’t capable of writing anything of worth without the input of a rockstar partner, or that she was piggybacking off the success that he had with Nirvana in order to boost her own profile.
This, of course, is a gigantic mistruth, and one that was only perpetuated to diminish her talents as a songwriter and use her as a scapegoat for the tragic death of her spouse, and you only need to listen to the boisterous brilliance of an album like Live Through This to notice that her abilities were far beyond what she was ever given credit for. Granted, Hole never quite broke into the mainstream in the same way that Nirvana did, but they had enough attention from audiences within the underground rock circuit that could have made them the next grunge superstars, or indeed put the riot grrrl movement on the map.
When compared to the works of contemporaries like Bikini Kill and Babes in Toyland, there was something far more ready for mainstream attention and adulation about Hole’s work, and with Love’s ability to write bubblegum hooks that were backed by vicious guitar lines and snarling vocals, they offered something that was not just a unique prospect, but fully geared up to be successful, But how exactly did their work perform in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic? Was it simply a case of a moderate success story, or was it a case of them arriving at the wrong time, where their work wasn’t ready to be appreciated with the same importance?
What’s Courtney Love’s highest-ever charting position?
While their second album, Live Through This, is often regarded as the best record that Hole ever released as a group, it was their follow-up, Celebrity Skin, that proved to be the most they ever flirted with mainstream attention, reaching number 11 in the UK album charts, and breaking into the top ten with a number nine peak in the US.
The title track from this album is regularly perceived as their ‘biggest hit’, and the one that’s most likely to get airplay now from classic rock radio stations. With its jagged riffs and indelible shout-along chorus, the 1997 hit did manage to scrape its way up to number 19 in the UK, but was given a much more underwhelming reception in the US, only getting as high as number 85 on the Billboard Hot 100. It did, however, reach number one in the alternative chart, but if we’re only going by a country’s main charts, this isn’t the highest that the band ever reached.
Two singles from Live Through This actually outperformed ‘Celebrity Skin’ in the UK charts, with ‘Violet’ climbing to number 17 in 1995, and ‘Doll Parts’ having achieved a spot at number 16 the year before, and if we’re only going to measure this by the two main charts in the UK and US, this is as high as Love ever managed to achieve with the band.
However, it was ‘Malibu’, the follow-up single to ‘Celebrity Skin’, that achieved their highest-ever chart position, with the Australian charts taking it as high as number 11 in their weekly rosters. It may not have managed to crack the top 10, but it was as close as they ever got in a mainstream chart around the world, and is therefore the greatest success that the band ever had in a major listing.