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Celebrity Skin (song)

"Celebrity Skin"
Holecelebskin.jpg
Single by Hole
from the album Celebrity Skin
B-side "Best Sunday Dress"(UK CD, 7")
"Dying" (demo) (UK CD)
Released September 1, 1998 (1998-09-01)
Format CD, 7"
Recorded April 1997 (1997-04)—February 1998 (1998-02) at Conway Recording Studios and Record Plant West in Los Angeles, California
Genre Alternative rock, power pop, post-grunge
Length 2:42 (album version)
2:44 (music video)
Label Geffen
Writer(s) Courtney Love (40%), Billy Corgan (40%), Eric Erlandson (20%)
Producer(s) Michael Beinhorn
Hole singles chronology
"Gold Dust Woman"
(1996)
"Celebrity Skin"
(1998)
"Malibu"
(1998)

"Celebrity Skin" is the tenth single by American alternative rock band Hole, released on September 1, 1998 by Geffen Records. It is the debut single from their third studio album of the same name and is Hole's most commercially successful single, being the only one to reach #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. In October 2011, NME placed it at number 126 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".

The song was written and recorded in 1997 after Hole's reported hiatus in 1996 due to frontwoman Courtney Love's rising movie career. According to Love, cowriter Billy Corgan wrote the song's main guitar riff during his time at the Celebrity Skin sessions.

"Once you've stood onstage bleating your schoolgirl poetry," Love observed, "are you going to stay there, when you have the power and ability to give yourself a platform? I mean, here's the celebrity, and we all know it's stupid and ephemeral, but why not foster it? Why not feed it? Because all that it will do is give the thing that has substance – the art – more power."

The lyrics, written by Love, contain references to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem A Superscription, and William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night ("My name is 'Might-Have-Been"), as well as the song sharing the name of an indie American pornographic magazine and a short-lived punk rock group from Los Angeles that featured ex-Germs drummer Don Bolles. Love joked on Later... with Jools Holland in 1995 that the song was entitled "Celebrity Skin" "'cause [she] touched a lot of it."

It was also used in the film American Pie, but did not appear on the soundtrack, as well as being featured in the intro of the video game NHL Rock The Rink, as well as the video games Rock Band and Sing Star as a playable track and downloadable content. The song received two Grammy nominations for Best Rock Song, losing to "Uninvited" by Alanis Morissette and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, losing to "Pink" by Aerosmith.


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