Known for their abrasive sound, uncompromising lyrics and wild stage presence, Hole were a staple in the 1990s alternative boom. Though the likes of Nirvana and Soundgarden have overshadowed them in the grunge canon, they were one of the most powerful forces in the genre, frequently using their platform to brazenly speak out about gender inequality.
Despite their raucous reputation, one of Hole’s most successful hits was also one of their simplest. ‘Doll Parts’ formed the second single to their second studio album, Live Through This, released in 1994, and demonstrated their movement away from harsh noise. Despite its more subdued sound and the impressively short amount of time Courtney Love spent writing it, it remains one of their most iconic tracks.
As the frontwoman once recalled in an Instagram post, it took Love just 20 minutes to write the track. During a house party at a friend’s house, she retreated to the bathroom to pen ‘Doll Parts’, a song about a boy she was seeing at the time – Nirvana frontman and Love’s future husband, Kurt Cobain.
“It was about a boy, whose band had just left town, who I’d been sleeping with, who I heard was sleeping with two other girls,” she explained. This story is reflected in the song’s unforgiving yet tender lyrics, which declare, “I want to be the girl with the most cake, I love him so much, it just turns to hate.”
Love stated that it was her way of telling Cobain, “You’re a fucking idiot if you don’t choose ME, and here is all the desire and fury and love that I feel for you”.
Despite the soft strums that adorn Love’s lyricism, that fury and passion can certainly be felt – in her increasingly hurt repetition of the phrase, “Someday, you will ache like I ache”, and in her stark declaration of, “They really want you, but I do too”.
It’s an impressive feat for just 20 minutes of songwriting, fuelled by passion and anger. “Good songs don’t always come in 20 minutes, but the force was strong, and that one did,” Love concluded, “Anyway, I married that guy.”
Even Love was surprised at how successful the song would become, as she once told Uncut: “I still don’t understand why that one song with just three chords is such a big thing. But it’s definitely got some good lyrics. That was a song about Kurt. I wrote it in Boston. So the ‘dog beg,’ that’s because there was a dog begging me for food.”
Perhaps the song’s genius lies within its simplicity – the hurt and emotion Love was feeling all tumbled out at once into one of their most honest and beloved tracks.
