Courtney Love’s America’s Sweetheart : 1990s-Style Guitar Swinging at the Start of the New Millennium

2026/03/24 by James How · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Music History and Culture #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Diverse Music Education Insights

paper · doi:10.1080/19401159.2026.2647536

openalex publication_date 2026/03/24 · openalex created_date 2026/03/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/21

Abstract

Courtney Love’s debut solo album America’s Sweetheart (2004) has been considered an artistic and commercial failure. Through a comparison with Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising (2002), I argue that this response was conditioned by the newly dominant patriarchal hegemony in America after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. I explore how Love’s determination to keep on rocking out as if it were still the 1990s—in defiance of contemporary music scenes—can be read as an act of resistance and defiance, and the album itself a response to the era of war and terrorism America was facing in the new Millennium.

Citations

• Significantly Othered: Limp Bizkit and the Politics of Nu Metal “Otherness”

Discussions

• Courtney Love’s America’s Sweetheart: 1990s-Style Guitar Swinging at the Start of the New Millennium by James How doi.org/10.1080/1940... @tandfresearch.bsky.social #MusicStudies @dazeddigital.com [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]

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