070 Shake’s new album Petrichor is out today, and it features Courtney Love on the transformed Tim Buckley cover “Song Of The Siren.” Meanwhile, the Hole singer is auctioning off handwritten lyrics to “Violet” for charity, and she’s using it as an opportunity to clarify the meaning of the song.
“It’s not just about Billy Corgan, as many might assume,” Love to NME about the Live Through This opening track, “it’s about sitting on the fire escape of his flat, sipping cheap wine and taking a Vicodin (oh, to be young!) while the Chicago sun sets, leaving behind a bejewelled amethyst sky.”
“Sometimes I just channel whatever comes,” she added. “I realize my comment on Jools Holland was a bit mean — I was just being bitchy beefy. But someone has to uphold the standards of good faith beef!” (Her comment on Jools Holland in 1995 was that “Violet” was “a song about a jerk, I hexed him and now he’s losing his hair.”) She continued:
It is somewhat influenced by Pope and Brontë. I drew from Pope’s The Dunciad and an Emily Brontë poem. I did borrow from Brontë but ultimately decided to cross it out. The rhyme scheme is good but it felt too much like imitation — I was trying being “method,” but it ended up feeling excessive.
The piece also touches on the theme of being caught between two boys — representing the angel and devil within me, as well as my own nature. There’s a line that mentions “Danny’s new number,” referring either to Goldberg or a drug dealer — another Danny, known as “Bobby Bones,” who Flea will remember. Yikes!
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Meanwhile her gauzy collab with 070 Shake also features Hole’s Melissa Auf der Maur, and it’s her and Love’s first recording collab in 24 years. Hear it below.
