Courtney Love Reflects on 33 Years of Hole’s Debut Album ‘Pretty On The Inside,’ Talks “Still Battling Kurt’s Dammed Demons”

Legendary Hole vocalist Courtney Love has recently looked back at the band’s debut album, Pretty On The Inside from 1991. Taking to social media, she shared a little bit about making the album and how she felt like it was her best writing in honor of the 33rd anniversary of its release.

Hole formed in 1989, and Pretty On The Inside was their first album. The band had some big names in the genre backing up the project—it was produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Don Fleming from Gumball.

“‘POTI’ [‘Pretty On The Inside’] is like an exorcism, it felt awesome to scream that loud and be that visceral and primal, but back to R.E.M. right after,” Courtney Love said in a post shared by an Instagram fan page. She added, “and the lyrics on ‘POTl’ are sick I never corrected one lyric I simply scatted what was in my head then and it was 25 yrs of repressed rage.”

Pretty On The Inside took a rough-and-tumble approach to punk—it was sloppy, abrasive, and completely free from restrictions or obligations. While Hole later distanced themselves from this initial style, their first album was a raw, rabid style of punk.

“These songs are about my own weaknesses and impurities; things about myself that I hate … paranoias, petty concerns, and pithy, pathetic things that are inside of me,” Courtney Love was quoted in the caption.

[RELATED: Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur of Hole Are Back in the Studio for the First Time in 24 Years]

Courtney Love Discusses the “Repressed Rage” of Hole’s First Album Pretty On The Inside

Courtney Love continued the post by discussing the lyrics on Pretty On The Inside. She wrote that the “lyrical equations on ‘POTI’ are the best I will ever do (Rimbaud stopped young) I know I’m one of the best, but ‘poti’? It can’t really be topped lyrically for feminine lyrics, feminine rage, it was my first time letting go of all sense of proportion, what’s ‘nice.’”

Pretty On The Inside features songs about female sexuality, death, violence, and abstract narratives. While Courtney Love initially considered the album “unlistenable,” she changed her tune recently. Love essentially found the album cathartic and “transformative” looking back in recent years.

While the final product of Pretty On The Inside was rough and raw, Love explained that she knew in about a week the album would have “the exact impact that it had, no more no less, and it was awesome.” She also touched on her relationship with Kurt Cobain following Hole’s debut, sharing that she no longer feels the same way she felt during that time.

“I like being in total control like that, then I hooked up with [Kurt Cobain] at some point and everything lost control,” she wrote. “He-lovely [sic], but the nonsense? well, I’m still battling Kurt’s dammed demons. When do I get to battle mine? ‘poti’ differentiated me and gave me a ‘brand’ that I’m still trying to shed off of myself. I’m not 24 and spitting bile anymore! Damn!”

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