Courtney Love
America's Sweetheart (2004)

Review by: Jason Thornberry
Date: 6/15/04

Several years and various self-inflicted new bruises later, Courtney Love is back in range of the Media Spotlight – a light she craved enough to attach herself first to Faith No More, and then Nirvana as the "Little Mosquito That Could." Her twofold quests for fame and infamy became more evident when the latter posse sank in 1994. So, today she sits with an accountant, mirrors turned backward, legs comfortably spread, examining the proceeds from newly exhumed journals of the gentleman who signed that one wedding contract. Courtney's new lease on life included untold millions she did nothing to earn, as well as an excuse to be seen. And heard.

If anything, America's Sweetheart will make for small deposits in Love's bank account purely out of a morbid curiosity. Tracks like "Hold On To Me", and "Sunset Strip" grate the mind like a wire brush. Her other songs have the naiveté of the forgotten bar bands from whence they originally came, while she channels Lita Ford's medicated alter ego and the choruses slap together like the hips of two drunks sweating in a Pinto. The stereo emits a funny smell. Courtney's patchy, emphysemic stories of recovery and revolution that only just stay in key reminds one, of first The Shaggs, and more recently, William Hung.