Format CD, 7" | ||
B-side "Best Sunday Dress"(UK CD, 7")
"Dying" (demo) (UK CD) Released September 1, 1998 (1998-09-01) 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) | ||
"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".
Contents
Background and history
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.
Celebrity Skin appeared in the 2011 family film Hop. In 2012, the song was performed by Heather Morris and Chord Overstreet in the Glee episode "Makeover"
A line from the song inspired the alternative rock group Garbage to name their third album Beautiful Garbage.
Music video
The music video for "Celebrity Skin" was directed by Nancy Bardawil. The video features the band performing the song on a stage, women wearing pink-purple ball gowns hanging from the ceiling and the women later lifting up their skirts as they amble around the stage. The video design bears resemblance to the Marilyn Monroe film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. As well as performance footage, there are also a number of close-ups of Courtney Love and Melissa Auf der Maur lying in coffins. Patty Schemel, although still a member of the band at the time of shooting, does not appear in the video. Schemel was replaced by a lookalike (Samantha Maloney using red hair to emulates Schemel) and only informed a music video was planned after it was shot. The video was shot in black and white and the footage was colorized by Cerulean Fx in post-production.