10 Almost Perfect Grunge Albums With One Bad Song
1. Hole: Celebrity Skin (1998)
Hole's third album saw the band, move away significantly from their earlier, grunge-oriented sound. The album was underpinned with the grunge ethos, but the tracks took on a more pop-centric, alt-rock mood. Under the watchful eye of The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan - who joined the sessions to help develop ideas - the group constructed an album that would go on to be their most successful, but also their last.
The title track become a huge hit, and it's not surprising. Corgan contributed a riff, that has since become instantly recognisable, and Love's lyrics were a scathing examination of the notion of celebrity; both branding celebrity culture as vapid, but also embracing it as a means to champion art.
This record is fun, for the most part the lyrics are catchy, if not somewhat predictable, and the hooks and melodies are infectious. But this was when grunge went commercial. Depending on your current mood you'll either enjoy it at face value - a poppy take on grunge - or you'll dismiss it, as the ultimate example of commercial rock drivel. No matter your stance, we can all agree, Awful, lives up to its namesake. The melody just sounds like generic '90s pop-rock; which isn't all that offensive, but the lyrics are a mixture of clichéd and borrowed concepts that scream of being contrived.