Courtney Love took aim at several of today’s top female artists in a new interview published this weekend by The Evening Standard. Love did not hesitate in the face of online “Stan” culture, criticizing pop stars such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Her comments about Swift have definitely garnered the biggest response from social media so far.
“Taylor is not important,” Love said bluntly. “She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.” Unsurprisingly, die-hard Swifties refuted Love’s argument that Swift is unimportant and uninteresting, claiming that her music is revolutionary in certain ways. However, Even critics of Swift, Love or both found it odd that Love compared Swift to Madonna. Many pointed out that Swift does not have the same approach to sexuality in her work, and does not attack the status quo in the same way.
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Love went on to discuss the prevalence of female artists in general these days, saying: “It’s great that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but lots of them are becoming a cliché. Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there is just too much music. They’re all the same. If you play something on Spotify, you get bombarded with a lot of stuff that’s exactly the same.”
She then courted backlash from another infamously rabid fandom, saying: “I mean, I like the idea of Beyoncé doing a country record because it’s about Black women going into spaces where previously only white women have been allowed, not that I like it much. As a concept, I love it. I just don’t like her music.”
Ironically, Love gave this interview to promote her new radio show where she specifically celebrates music by women for women. The show is called Courtney Love’s Women and it airs on the BBC. She admitted that has never shied away from giving negative commentary, even knowing the drawbacks for her own career. She said: “I always wanted to be known as a b-. I had a b- capacity and I was cool with not being liked. I saw Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back and he didn’t want to be liked and I thought, yeah, I want to be like that.”
Courtney Loves’ Women premiered earlier this month and there are already six episodes available to stream, with two more on the way this week. The show is available on the BBC website.
