Courtney Love Says the Level of Hate Aimed at Her After Kurt Cobain's Death 'Reached a Completely New Level'

In a new interview, Courtney Love reveals that she was blindsided by the amount of hatred she received in the wake of her husband Kurt Cobain's death in 1994, saying that it “reached a completely new level.”

The interview, which took place at Love’s west London home, revolved around the release of Courtney Love’s Women, her new eight-part series on BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Sounds.

“People used to say that I was so difficult,” Love told The Standard. "They said I was disagreeable. Yes, I am completely disagreeable and I’m never going to apologise for that. I always wanted to be known as a b—h. Being liked was never my thing. Kurt wanted to be liked but not me. He was able to hide behind me, but then I got hated. Then Kurt died, and the hatred towards me reached a completely new level."

“I did not plan for that,” Love continued. “I’m all for taking my wiener out on stage, like Jim Morrison did. If I had a wiener and I was drunk enough, I would have totally taken it out, just like Jim. I had a bitch 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.”

Regarding Courtney Love's Women, the BBC press release for the program described it as follows:

"Throughout the series, Courtney recalls: her formative years, in which she discovered disco through the record collection at a childhood care home; reciting Sylvia Plath poetry for a Mickey Mouse Club audition; her love of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone; her time at an all-girl boarding school in New Zealand and in juvenile detention; couch-surfing across America; her struggles with drug abuse; her acting career – which resulted in a Golden Globe nomination for her role in The People vs. Larry Flynt in 1997; how she attempted to creatively matchmake Stevie Nicks and Billy Corgan; hanging out with Debbie Harry at a Limp Bizkit album launch at the Playboy Mansion; Gwen Stefani; her relationship with Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain; taking pandemic guitar lessons with The Big Moon’s Juliet Jackson and much more."

Love's interview for The Standard already made headlines of a different sort last week as a result of her remarks about some of her fellow female artists, with her criticisms catching more people's attention than any praise she might have offered.

On Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter: "As a concept, I love it. I just don't like her music."

On Taylor Swift: "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist."

On Madonna: "I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me. I loved Desperately Seeking Susan but for the city of New York as much as her."

You can read Q's previous coverage of the article right here.

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