Doll Parts

Love wrote the song in late 1991 and played it acoustically at a concert in Massachusetts that November. She has said she wrote most of the lyrics in an apartment, some of them on her arm in marker, and the dog begging in the first verse was a real dog in the room. The first studio version was recorded for John Peel at Maida Vale on 19 November 1991, a second for Mark Goodier of the BBC on 27 March 1993, and the album version at Triclops in October 1993. The song uses three chords, A, Cmaj7 and G, and Love has said she does not understand why that one song became such a big thing.

Slade pointed to Dana Kletter's harmony on the line about aching as an Appalachian close harmony that adds melancholy. The producers left in the crack in Love's voice even though Geffen executives wanted it removed. Doll Parts was released in Australia on 10 October 1994 and in the United States on 15 November. It reached number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number four on Modern Rock Tracks, and Rolling Stone placed it at 208 in its 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs. Samuel Bayer directed the video, with Jennifer Finch of L7 playing bass, and it was nominated for Best Alternative Video at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards. Tricky covered it as Doll in 2017, and Miley Cyrus sang it on the Howard Stern Show in December 2020.