Advice for Courtney Love

By Paul Cibis on December 18th, 2009

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Dear Courtney Love,

When reports emerged earlier this week that you had lost custody of your daughter, no one was surprised. It’s been public knowledge for over a decade now that you are, at best, a hot mess and, at worst, a pitiable train wreck of a human being. This is a problem. With your long delayed second solo album — presciently titled Nobody’s Daughter — finally set to drop in early 2010, you’re going to need to generate some publicity just as the public is tuning you out. It’s been almost six years since your last album that almost nobody liked, so you have no musical legacy to fall back on, and clearly your “Valley of the Dolls” shtick isn’t cutting it anymore. Your bad behavior has become so de rigeur that it’s barely even news. ”Courtney Love Loses Daughter” is the 21st century equivalent of “Dog Bites Man.” So, if you want to get the new album into the public consciousness, you’re going to have to up the stakes in a major way. My advice to you, Courtney Love: Admit that you killed Kurt Cobain.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think you killed Kurt Cobain, I’m just saying that you should say you did. Hear me out. Rumors have circulated for years that your husband’s death was not actually a suicide, and most of those rumors implicate you in his death. Use that. Remember that guy John Mark Karr, who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey? There was no evidence that he’d ever been anywhere near JonBenet, but everybody believed him for a hot second because he was a creepy weirdo. Your story is way more plausible than that guy’s. Kurt Cobain was your husband so you probably had more access than anyone. You could have totally murdered him whenever you wanted. Plus, everyone already thinks you’re a drugged out lunatic. All the pieces fit. People will either be elated to have their suspicions confirmed, or they will be shocked that you were able to get away with this heinous crime for almost two decades. In any case, people will be talking about you and that’s what we want. This confession has the added benefit of explaining away years of terrible behavior. You’ve been so consumed by guilt this whole time that the only way to drown it out was a tsunami of narcotics. Your story is like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but with more coke and percocet.

“What about my music?” you ask. Well, here’s the most important part of the plan. The album becomes an extension of the confession. If you say that the songs on Nobody’s Daughter are about Kurt’s murder, the plotting of it, how it really happened, the aftermath, that the whole thing is a concept album retracing your crime, people will buy the record and tear it apart looking for clues. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t actually clues, people will find them anyway. Paul McCartney isn’t really dead, but people are still finding “evidence” to the contrary in the White Album liner notes. Your album will be like the Dead Sea Scrolls of rock ‘n roll. People will be pouring over every last detail for years to come.

So that’s the plan. It won’t be easy. Even OJ wasn’t quite able to pull off a fake murder confession, and he actually killed people. This may be the mother of all PR stunts, but fortunately no one is better at self-aggrandizing publicity stunts than you. Of course, there is another, slightly less drastic, option. You could release a good album. You could knuckle down, dig deep, and record a thoughtful, mature, but still rocking album that doesn’t sound like an overproduced retread of material you were doing better 15 years ago. If you can put your money where your mouth is (that’s the place where the drugs go) and create an album worthy of your self-proclaimed status as First Lady of Alt Rock. That really would be something worth talking about.