Nobody's Daughter

In September 2005, after violating a legal drug probation, Courtney Love was sentenced to a six-month program in a lock-down rehabilitation center, Beau Monde, from which she was released after one half of the sentenced time and completed the other three months under house arrest. While she was in rehab, her friend and producer Linda Perry — who had previously produced her 2004 first solo album, ''America's Sweetheart'' — visited Love and supported her by encouraging her to write new songs, gifting her a Martin acoustic guitar. Love then borrowed a Panasonic compact-cassette recorder and began writing material during her time in rehab. "My hand-eye coordination was so bad, I didn't even know [guitar] chords anymore," Love recalled. "It was like my fingers were frozen. And I wasn't allowed to make noise [in rehab]." Shortly after her release from rehab in November 2005, Love revealed the working titles of several of five of the eight tracks she composed, which included "My Bedroom Walls", "The Depths of My Despair", "Sad But True", and "How Dirty Girls Get Clean." Moby, to whom Love sent several recordings, commented: "I thought the music was remarkably good, it reminded me of Irish protest songs or old Bob Dylan. It was just her with an acoustic guitar." At one point, Love suggested she would be working with Moby on the album, though she subsequently chose Linda Perry as producer. ==Recording==

2006–2007: Initial sessions 's friend and former producer, Linda Perry (pictured) served as producer of the initial recording sessions for what would become ''Nobody's Daughter'' In January 2006, Love, with Perry producing and Corgan arranging, entered the Village studio in Los Angeles to begin recording the album. By Love's account, the sessions lasted "66 and a half days." Perry recalled that Love had been "scrolling through my computer filled with songs and heard it and said, "I want to do this song." The lyrical content totally made sense for her. But it's not her type of song. It was more cinematic and more dramatic. It wasn't guitar-driven. It was more vulnerable, so it took me by surprise that she gravitated towards that." on her 43rd birthday, July 9, 2007 On April 29, 2006, Love made a surprise appearance at a Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center benefit with Corgan and Perry, where she performed acoustic versions of the new songs "Sunset Marquis" and "Pacific Coast Highway". In an interview covering the event, Love stated that the songs were "dramatically different from the demos... The songs are smashing now. I wouldn't fuck around here, this is the best shit I've done since the Live Through This period." In October that year, Love performed an acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again" for a Rolling Stone interviewer, who observed: "this proud confessional combines simple folk-rock soundcraft with the guttural scream and lyrical fire of a never-to-be-retired riot grrrl." In early 2007, Love announced she planned to mix the album—at the time tentatively titled How Dirty Girls Get Clean—in London with Danton Supple, best known for his work with Coldplay. Over the following year, she made several further live appearances showcasing the new material, including a June 2007 appearance with Perry (performing on guitar) at the Los Angeles House of Blues. The following month, on July 9—Love's 43rd birthday—she performed a secret show at London's Bush Hall with a new backing band, including guitarist Micko Larkin and bassist Patricia Vidal. During this time, Liam Wade also served as an additional guitarist in Love's backing band. Three days later, on July 12, Love performed a free show at the Hiro Ballroom in New York City, and at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood on July 17. 2008–2009: Subsequent sessions In May 2008, after several attempts at recording the album with Corgan and Perry failed to reach fruition, Love announced she was planning to scrap the record and begin reshaping it with guitarist Micko Larkin, who had joined her backing band. Under Beinhorn's supervision, a new backing band was enlisted, consisting of guitarist Larkin, bassist Shawn Dailey, and drummer Stu Fisher. In late June 2009, it was reported by NME that Love intended to release the album—now titled ''Nobody's Daughter''—as a Hole record, the name of her former band. After instrumental tracks were recorded with Beinhorn, an "erratic" Love "slowed to a stop for several months," failing to complete vocal tracks for the album. According to Love, during the later recording sessions, she had been listening to Elvis Presley and various blues artists, which she cited as influential on the track "Someone Else's Bed". She also cited David Bowie's album Diamond Dogs (1974), Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), and 1980s gothic rock as influences. Linda Perry, in a retrospective interview, expressed disappointment with the subsequent recording of the material: "[After we initially started recording in 2006], Courtney disappeared and came back fucked-up again. And they [Love, Beinhorn, and Larkin] re-recorded these songs badly and a beautiful record got ruined and sounded like shit. I love Courtney. She's a fabulous disaster, but she really is a genius and one of the smartest people I have ever met. I wish her well. I wish she would just do one more really serious, great record. One day I'm going to mix that [unreleased] album and fucking leak it out there. If it's ever leaked, just know that it was me who did it." Perry receives producing credit on two tracks on the album: "Letter to God" and "Never Go Hungry", as well as writing credits on five of the eleven tracks. ==Artwork==

'' (1834) by Paul Delaroche The album cover is a portrait of Marie Antoinette by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, cropped at the neck, implying Antoinette's execution by guillotine. This same portrait of Antoinette (in full) was also featured in the interior artwork of Hole's compilation album My Body, the Hand Grenade (1997). The back artwork of the album features a thematically similar portrait of Anne Boleyn, also cropped at the neck, while the inlay displays the 1834 painting The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, depicting Lady Jane Grey blindfolded in the moments before her execution. "The art is pretty-self evident," Love commented. "We always seem to get rid of the good dames." In the interior panel of the album liner notes, a painting titled Accident (2009) by contemporary artist Gretchen Ryan is featured, which shows a number of ballerinas walking toward the edge of a precipice; alongside it is a photo by Bennett Miller of a woman's bloodied foot in a broken glass slipper. ==Release and promotion==

Label and sponsorships During the initial recording sessions with Linda Perry between 2006 and 2007, Love had intended to release the album on Perry's independent label, Custard Records. On January 5, 2009, Love claimed ''Nobody's Daughter'' had received sponsorship endorsements from several corporations, including unnamed tequila and tampon companies, totaling approximately $30 million. In 2013, several years after the album's release, however, Love clarified: "It had over $30 million of sponsorships behind it, allegedly, and then the guy that got all the sponsorships, it turns out it was all bogus. The Red Bull, the Jordache. And he went and hung himself...  He hung himself out of I guess shame." It was announced by Entertainment Weekly in February 2010 that ''Nobody's Daughter was scheduled for release on April 27 through Mercury Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. In March 2010, Universal Music Group confirmed in a press release that Love had signed with Mercury and that Nobody's Daughter'', which was to be released under the Hole name, was scheduled for release on that date. On April 27, 2010, a short music video of Love getting tattooed in a tattoo parlor, overdubbed with an abridged version of the album single "Skinny Little Bitch", was released. The video short was filmed by Casey Neistat. Artist title dispute Following a June 2009 announcement that Love was releasing her upcoming album under the Hole band name, Love publicly disputed Erlandson's claims on her Twitter account in what The Guardian described as "a deluge of often baffling tweets," writing: "Uh I just heard that a former guitar player is saying I can't use my name for MY band. He's out of his MIND. He may want to check the trademark ... and his [American Express] Disease Model Tour bills, and umm, let's see, his [1999] usage of that Amex and his [2001] usage of, wow – 298k? 198,000 DOLLARS? Hole is MY band, MY name and MY trademark." A new website promoting the band and album was subsequently published in March 2010. On April 14, 2010, shortly before the release of ''Nobody's Daughter'', Erlandson elaborated on the contract that he had mentioned in 2009, stating, "in the agreement, she agreed that she would not use the name Hole commercially without my approval. She was intent on using her name at that point, figuring it had more value than the name Hole." In 2014, after Love returned to performing as a solo artist, she expressed regret over releasing the album as a Hole record: "That was a mistake in 2010. Eric was right—I kind of cheapened the name, even though I'm legally allowed to use it. I should save "Hole" for the lineup everybody wants to see and had the balls to put ''Nobody's Daughter'' under my own name." Tour , March 17, 2010 To promote the album, Hole, with the line-up of Love, guitarist Micko Larkin, bassist Shawn Dailey, and drummer Stu Fisher, performed "Samantha" on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on February 12, 2010. Love was also interviewed prior to the performance. The band performed their first live show since their reunion at London's O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire on February 17, 2010. The band performed two other European dates at Milan's Magazzini Generali, and Amsterdam's Paradiso on February 19 and 21, 2010, respectively. "Samantha" and "Skinny Little Bitch" were performed at the NME Awards at London's O2 Academy Brixton on February 24, 2010; highlights from the show, including a shortened version of "Samantha", were broadcast on February 26, 2010, on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the United States, the band performed at Spins annual South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas on March 19 and 20, 2010. These shows marked the band's first tour dates in the U.S. since their final tour in 1999. For the North American leg of their tour, the band began with a show at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on April 22, 2010, followed by Terminal 5 in New York City on April 27; additional U.S. and Canada tour dates were booked throughout the summer, as well as several shows in England and Scotland in early May 2010. The band concluded their North American tour with a performance at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival on September 5, 2010. ==Reception==

Commercial performance The album debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling approximately 22,000 copies in its first week in the United States. By its third week of release it had sold 33,000 copies in total. According to Metromix, the album was one of the biggest commercial flops of 2010, having undersold Love's previous solo album, ''America's Sweetheart'' (also considered a commercial failure). Despite this, the album's lead single, "Skinny Little Bitch", was a commercial hit, and by April 1, 2010, had been classified a "Power Play" track by the radio conglomerate Active Rock, who gave it airplay a minimum of 50 times per week on hundreds of U.S. radio stations. Critical response ''Nobody's Daughter'' received generally mixed reviews from music critics, holding an average score of 57 out of 100 on the review aggregator Metacritic. Petra Davis of The Quietus noted that, as with Love's previous works, ''Nobody's Daughter'' "habitually contests notions of family," as well as observing the record overall is "perceptibly the product of two distinct song cycles: one immediately post-rehab, written on the acoustic guitar Love claimed saved her life, developed and given shape by Linda Perry, Love's longtime foil and the reassuring voice behind her disastrous solo album; and another, more recent cycle, the product of more active collaboration, largely with Larkin and Billy Corgan." AllMusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine was critical of the record's "inward-leaning singer/songwriter roots", stating "it's impossible to disguise the turgid tuneless folk-rock swirl at the heart of ''Nobody's Daughter". Amanda Petrusich of Pitchfork was highly critical of the album, awarding it 2.9 out of 10 rating, writing: "What are we allowed to demand from Courtney Love? More than this. Nobody's Daughter'' is heartbreakingly banal [and] Love's lyrics...  are plastic and artless. Despite its few fleeting moments of honesty, ''Nobody's Daughter ultimately feels like a badly missed opportunity." while Billboard noted that "[with an entirely new lineup], Love sounds as self-assured as ever, sliding over syllables and hitting the emotional high notes...  Nobody's Daughter'' recalls the highlights of the band's critically acclaimed 1994 album, Live Through This, and shows that, as a band, Hole is not one bit damaged." Spins Phoebe Reilly awarded the album seven out of ten stars, praising the album's "slick, spiraling guitars." Sheffield noted in his review that Love "seems to have blown her voice. In nearly every song, she croaks and gasps for breath, squeaking when she attempts to snarl. The slower the tempo, the harder she pushes to hold notes too long, as in the excruciating "For Once in Your Life" and "Someone Else's Bed."" ==Aftermath==

In 2012, Love abandoned the Hole name and returned to writing and recording as a solo artist, making ''Nobody's Daughter'' the band's final release. ==Track listing==

• Courtney Lovevocals, guitar • Micko Larkinguitar • Shawn Daileybass • Stu Fisherdrums Guest musicians Design • Patrick Hegartartwork • Front cover: Marie Antoinette with a Rose by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1783 • Back cover: Anne Boleyn by anonymous, 16th century • Interior panel: Accident by Gretchen Ryan, 2009 • Inlay: The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, 1834 Notes I denotes engineer at Henson Recording Studios II denotes engineer at Electric Lady Studios Production • Michael Beinhornproducer • Micko Larkinproducer • Linda Perryproducer , engineer • Owen Lewisassistant producer • Karl Egsiekerengineer • Nico Essigadditional engineer • Tom Syrowskiadditional engineer • Noah Goldsteinengineer • Ryan Gilliganadditional engineer • Ian Sheaadditional engineer • Pete Bischofadditional engineer • Dave Sardymixing • John O'Mahoneymixing • Andy Brohardmix engineer • Alec Gomezadditional mix engineer • Cameron Bartonadditional mix engineer • John Schmersaladditional mix engineer • Dave McNairmastering ==Charts==