Hole-Celebrity Skin (1998)
Artist: Hole
Title: Celebrity Skin
Label: DGC
Format: CD
Cat #: DGCD 25164
Year of Release: 1998
Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1998
Listed Condition: VG+/VG+
Sell Date: 4/20/25
Sell Price: $3.33
Discogs Last Sold: 4/18/25 VG+/VG+ $3.00
Low: $1.49
Median: $3.00
Average: $3.87
High: $11.49
Current low price: $2.27
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 41
Have/Want: 36980/457
Where Sold: Belleville, NJ
Time it took to sell: 12 years
Where and When Bought: new NYC either Tower or Sounds
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B+
Sad To See It Go: No
The 3rd Hole full length album Celebrity Skin was a mainstream "outsider" artist turning toward the mainstream. Gone was the cute nose and baby fat. Instead we got Billy Corgan, blocky late 90's mastering and a concept album "dedicated to all the stolen water of Los Angeles. In hindsight, Courtney achieved greater success getting away from "punk rock" or "indie rock" or whathaveyou than say, Liz Phair around the same time.
For starters, the songs were better. The title track was the only one I initially remembered as the greatest and bestest and first single of the record. I sort've remembered "Awful" but somehow I never paid enough attention to it to realize it was about rewriting "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" to be... awful. Actually, the song is great, maybe the best thing on the album. This was not a Clapton-style reverential rework but a punk rock in spirit defiling of Leadbelly. A sly wink to the spirit of Kurt In The Pines.
Monday night I heard "Malibu" on a long bus trip before listening to this in full for a bit and watching the video. Somehow at the time this song escaped me and unlike the other two I didn't even know this was a single, but it stood out for me this time around for the harmonies. "Boys On The Radio" and "Hit So Hard" are the others I like so that's at least 5 great songs over a quarter century out. 3 of those 5 were "Pumpers" i.e. had a Billy Corgan credit. Oddly enough, of those 5, the one that sounded most to me like a "Pumper"--"Boys On The Radio," was not.
Some will pump, some will dump, what else can I say?
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