Courtney Love Thinks Taylor Swift Is “Not Important,” “Not Interesting”

Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Madonna are all modern musical icons who have been lauded for empowering their audiences, committing fully to their craft, and churning out straight-up bops for years. What’s not to love? Plenty, according to former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love.

In a new interview with the U.K.’s Standard, published Sunday, Love ripped into the chart-toppers. The 59-year-old singer, who has a self-admitted “bitch capacity” and characterized herself as “completely disagreeable,” is making press rounds in service of a new eight-part BBC Radio series, Courtney Love’s Women. In the series, Love goes deep on the women and music who shaped her life and career. These names are…not among them. “Being liked was never my thing,” Love said.

That's good, because the artists she mentioned likely won't be thrilled to hear what she has to say about them.

Of Swift, whom she called “aspirational huge role model for many young women” in a 2021 birthday post on Facebook, she said, “Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.”

Frequent Swift collaborator and friend Jack Antonoff, who once said that questioning Swift's songwriting abilities is like “challenging someone's faith in God. You just don't go there," may have some thoughts on Love's comments. 

The problem with modern female artists is one of sameness, Love said.

“It’s great that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but lots of them are becoming a cliché,” she said. “Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there is just too much music. They’re all the same.”

Trying something different doesn’t insulate an artist from Love’s criticism though.

“I like the idea of Beyoncé doing a country record because it’s about Black women going into spaces where previously only white women have been allowed, not that I like it much. As a concept, I love it,” she said. But? “I just don’t like her music.”

Her ire doesn’t end there, either. Lana del Rey influenced Love so much when she was recording that she had to stop listening, she said, but Love thinks she should “take seven years off.”

Madonna? Can we find something nice to say about her? “I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.”

So that's…that.