Courtney Love Sparks Backlash After Calling Taylor Swift 'Not Important' Or 'Interesting'

Alternative rocker Courtney Love thinks global superstar Taylor Swift is "not important" and "not interesting as an artist."

Love made the blunt declaration in an interview with The Standard after expressing admiration for women in music from earlier generations, including Patti Smith, Nina Simone, PJ Harvey, Julie London, Joni Mitchell, and Deborah Harry.

However, she was very unimpressed by certain contemporary female artists like Taylor Swift.

While Love is entitled to her opinion, it's hard to deny that Swift—who is experiencing a career zenith with her history-making Eras Tour—deserves the position as one of the most influential artists in the pop culture zeitgeist.

But Love doesn't agree with that point of view.

Love maintained:

“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.”

The widow of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was part of the alternative rock scene of the 1990s.

Love rose to prominence as a founding member, singer, and guitarist for the band Hole. In 2020 New Musical Express named her one of the most influential singers in alternative music of the last 30 years.

She also garnered critical acclaim as an actor in the films,The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon.

Love's opinion of Swift sparked backlash from Swifties.

Even non-Swifties thought Love's assessment was a bit off.

Love added:

“It’s great that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but lots of them are becoming a cliché."

She suggested that originality among female artists has become obsolete in contemporary music.

"Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there is just too much music. They’re all the same."

"If you play something on Spotify, you get bombarded with a lot of stuff that’s exactly the same."

Swift was not the only mainstream artist Love thought was overrated.

She also went after Beyoncé and her foray into country music with her latest album Cowboy Carter.

"I mean, 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. I just don’t like her music.”

Love isn't so keen on Lana Del Rey lately either.

She said of the "Summertime Sadness" singer/songwriter:

“I haven’t liked Lana since she covered a John Denver song, and I think she should really take seven years off."

"Up until ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ I thought she was great. When I was recording my new album, I had to stop listening to her as she was influencing me too much.”

Her thoughts on her on-again, off-again friend Madonna?

They're not so favorable either.

"I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me."

"I loved 'Desperately Seeking Susan,' but for the city of New York as much as her."

Love hasn't been in the spotlight much lately.

She announced she completed her second memoir—The Girl with the Most Cake—in August 2022, but the book has yet to be released. The literary endeavor reportedly took ten years.

Love previously penned Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love in 2006.

Her last acting ventures—the film The Long Home and the pandemic video series Bruises of Rose—were released in 2021.

It was announced in May 2023 that Courtney would appear in Assassination—a miniseries about a popular conspiracy theory about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—for Netflix.

Co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Mamet, the series also stars John Travolta, Al Pacino, Viggo Mortensen, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Shia LaBeouf. The alternate history gives a "what if" view of JFK's assassination as a mafia hit orchestrated by Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.

Assassination is slated for a 2024 release.