Between the multiple arrests, the drug allegations and the government taking her daughter away from her, it has not been a good year for Courtney Love. All of these mishaps may mislead a music fan to think that Courtney Love would not have the time or the state of mind to release a decent album. However, the ironically titled "America's Sweetheart" proves these naysayers wrong, and while the album never touches greatness, Love's first solo outing is a mostly solid effort.
In her former band, Hole, Love's greatest strength was never her technical precision or music virtuosity. Rather, it was the rawness of her sound and lyrics that made Hole a slight cut above the saturation of alternative rock bands in the mid-90s. It is this rawness that turns the beginning of this album into an adrenaline rush.
The first thing a listener will notice when listening to "America's Sweetheart" is that life and hard living have taken a toll on Love's voice. Her voice has always been an aggressive blowtorch of an instrument, but on this album, the roughness has been taken up a notch. In sharp contrast to the hushed, melodic coos that abound on Hole's "Celebrity Skin," Love has acquired a raspy, cigarettes-and-alcohol howl that is more reminiscent of the vocals she used on 1994's "Live Through This."
On some of the tracks on "America's Sweetheart," particularly the first two, these vocals add to, rather than detract from, the music. From a musical standpoint, "Mono" has a typical melody and song structure, but it is made special by Love's inflected vocals. She begins with animalistic shrieks of "Hey!" as a means of getting the listener's attention, and she drags her notes into cries of pain at the ends of her verses.
Love's lyrics, while graphic, do an excellent job of complementing her aggressive voice. Nevermind clever metaphors and neat puns -- Love's lyrics are stark and blunt. On "But Julian, I'm A Little Bit Older Than You," she screams, "I'm overrated, desecrated / Still somehow illuminated," and she courageously strikes back at her critics through self-parody. On the confessional "I'll Do Anything," Love touches upon her sexual and vengeful lusts, and she ends her tirade by lamenting, "I'm too young to be so old." Even though it is an indulgent line, the amount of personal troubles that Love has faced in her life makes this statement closer to fact than fiction.
Unfortunately, the rest of "America's Sweetheart" does not measure up to the blistering intensity of the first two tracks. The rest of the album rides a thin line between wanting to rock out and being wholly conventional. Love seems to have written the song "Hello" for airplay. Linda Perry, who receives songwriting credits on nine of the 12 songs, has previously worked with Pink and Christina Aguilera. By working with these two pop artists, Perry roughened up and "matured" their sounds, and she made them more accessible to a rock audience.
The problem is that Perry never needed to roughen up Love's sound. Love was aggressive and blunt enough to begin with, and instead, Perry's songwriting input has a castrating effect on "America's Sweetheart." For example, the power ballad "Uncool" sounds forced. It is inconsistent with Love's sensibilities as an artist, and the unwieldy mixture of Love's dramatic voice with overproduced power chords is bloated. Other songs, such as "Zeplin Song" and "Never Gonna Be The Same," are dull and contrived, and they work against the exact thing that defines Love as a musical artist -- her individuality.
"America's Sweetheart," for the most part, is comprised of average rock songs, and the listener can painfully sense how much better it could have been. Love proves with this album that she could be a relevant, lasting musical artist in years to come. If she would approach her music in the hedonistic way that she approaches her life, she has the potential to make a relevant, lasting album. "America's Sweetheart" is not it.
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