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She winds up with a processed, affected record halfway between Live Through This and Pat Benatar or possibly Billy Squier.
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BlenderWhile Love's voice is as scratchy and corrosive as ever, unfaraid to veer off-pitch for a good sneer, the album is big-time Hollywood rock. [Mar 2004, p.112]
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"America's Sweetheart" is a thrilling record. Held together by that extraordinary voice, which sounds even more shredded than it did in the days of "Dick Nail" and "Pretty On The Inside", she can still deliver.
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'America's Sweetheart' is still more 'Celebrity Skin' than anything.
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The result is a bumpy, self-indulgent ride, sure, but Love's fuming testimony is packed with a scraggily voice screaming to be heard and a bombastic blast of rage, raw power and sarcasm.
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Entertainment WeeklyLove's bristling energy and careening narcissism overcome the occasionally clubfooted arena-punk arrangements. [20 Feb 2004, p.63]
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Derivative and unfocused from every conceivable angle.
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In contrast to the raw, subdued intimacy of Hole's "Live Though This," the sound here is all dressed up and accessorized, hard and aggressive but tuneful and hook-laden.
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MojoIf anywhere, this stuff belongs in interviews, not in songs. [Mar 2004, p.94]
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This being Courtney, theres also an emotional rawness to Americas Sweetheart which youll either love or be repelled by.
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The songwriting is scattershot... and the sound strains for punk-on-a-budget but is as three-chord conservative as other retro acts like Rancid and the Distillers.
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While it's unfair to directly compare Courtney's solo work with Hole's shifty discography, America's Sweetheart demonstrates a fairly monstrous decline in both quality and conviction.
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Americas Sweetheart throbs, chugs, thunders, blasts, romps, rants and rocks.
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Q MagazineEven its most unlistenable moments command attention with a ferocity that most musicians get nowhere near. [Mar 2004, p.98]
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For people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart, America's Sweetheart should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon.
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Even if you slipped the album into your player without the slightest preconceived notion of who Courtney Love is or was, Sweetheart wouldn't be able to help but strike you as a document of sheer desperation, of a frantic need for approval. Worse, it's the audible sound of a talent in serious decline.
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SpinA jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994's Live Through This. [Mar 2004, p.89]
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Holes original précis was to become something like Sonic Youth crossed with Fleetwood Mac, and Americas Sweetheart is the closest shes come to creating that vision.
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Love has nothing new to say and no better way to say it.
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Love is a truly notable lyricist, but she's an ideas person rather than a musician.
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The music is appallingly predictable, unoriginal, uninspiring, boring, over-polished, and vain.
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UncutAmerica's Sweetheart is petulant and self-pitying. Worse, it's self-righteous. Worse still, it's musically crass. [Mar 2004, p.98]
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America's Sweetheart is one big, juicy fuckup, and fortunately for Courtney, there will always be little girls who hate being little girls, and are looking for a fairy godmother to show them how to self-destruct. Unfortunately, Karen O, Brody Dalle, and Amy Lee all made cooler records.
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An album as invigorating in its contempt for rock professionalism as Neil Young's Tonight's the Night.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 50 out of 72
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Mixed: 5 out of 72
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Negative: 17 out of 72
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Jan 28, 2023
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Oct 23, 2021
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Mar 30, 2021