Celebrity Skin

Hole began writing in 1997 in several American cities and found that the songs would not join up. Love's answer was to make California the theme. She said she wanted to deconstruct the California sound of the Doors, the Beach Boys and the Byrds. The band entered Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles in April 1997. Further recording took place at Record Plant West in Los Angeles and Olympic Studios in London, and the last sessions were at Quad Studios, with recording completed in London in late February 1998. Billy Corgan came to the studio for twelve days and shares instrumental credits on five songs. Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's and Jordon Zadorozny helped compose Reasons to Be Beautiful.

Beinhorn produced. Patty Schemel recorded drums for the demos, but Deen Castronovo played on the finished record, so her drumming is not on it, although she is credited. Melissa Auf der Maur is the bassist on her only Hole studio album. Love wrote all the lyrics. The title track quotes Dante Gabriel Rossetti and The Merchant of Venice, and water and drowning recur through the songs. The back cover shows a cropped version of Paul Steck's painting Ophelia, and the sleeve is dedicated to the stolen water of Los Angeles and to anyone who ever drowned. The front is a black-and-white Polaroid of the band in front of a burning palm tree.

Reception

It debuted at number nine on the Billboard 200 with 86,000 copies in its first week, went gold on 13 October 1998 and platinum on 21 December, and had sold 1.4 million copies in the United States by April 2010. It reached number four in Australia and number eleven in the United Kingdom. The singles were the title track, Malibu and Awful, and the album was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 1999 Grammys. Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times called it "one wild emotional ride". The Guardian wrote in 2018 that the songs "remain raw and cynical" despite the slickness of the production, and Stereogum called it "polished, decadent rock with something rotten at its core". Pitchfork wrote in 2026 that Hole cranked the dial on their "internal AM radio" and channeled 1970s California AOR tunes. NME placed it at 265 in 2013, and it appears in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.