Courtney Love: new solo album is finished, despite near death experience in 2019

Courtney Love has given her fans a highly anticipated update: her new solo album is finally finished. In an Instagram video, the Hole frontwoman announced that she will be stepping back from social media for the next few weeks to focus on other things, but wanted to first set the record straight about where things stand with her album. "A lot of you are asking where my record is at. It's done. It's kind of been done. It's a really good record. I put a lot into it," she said in the video. It will be her second solo album ever and the long awaited follow up to 2004's "America's Sweetheart," a gap of more than twenty years.

In the same video, Love also made a striking revelation about her health. After moving from Los Angeles to London in 2019, she was struck by a mysterious illness. Without naming a specific diagnosis, she described how her body essentially "exploded" and how she ended up in the hospital repeatedly. "I almost died," she said. "I lost all my hair. I was about 100 pounds. And they told me I was going to die. I didn't believe them." Her refusal to accept that verdict was tied to memories from her childhood, in which adults constantly questioned her perception of reality. Those experiences, she says, set the tone for the new album. In the caption accompanying the video, Love wrote that she made the album as if it were her last, and that during the recording process she was largely confined to the hospital but wrote and recorded relentlessly in the moments in between.

Contributors to the new record include guitarist Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen and former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. Love previously revealed that Sergeant laid down distinctive lead guitar parts, something he rarely does outside of his work with Echo and the Bunnymen. Auf der Maur returned to the studio with Love for the first time in more than two decades. The two also appeared together in 2024 on a cover of the Tim Buckley song "Song to the Siren," released under the name 070 Shake.

That collaboration sparked speculation earlier this year about a possible Hole reunion, fueled by a cryptic clip Love shared online featuring Auf der Maur and a caption hinting at a tour. Love later made clear, however, that an official reunion is not on the table: the two will perform together and play new material, but not as Hole. Auf der Maur said in a conversation with NME that after years of saying no, she had started to reconsider a return, partly driven by the political situation in the United States. "What I do know is I've always said no for many years, and it wasn't until the Evil Empire in the US that I began to contemplate where Hole, and Courtney's fearless feminism, and our generation, could maybe add to this dire dialogue in the US," Auf der Maur said.

Love closed out her video with a look back at the period surrounding "Nobody's Daughter," the final Hole album from 2010, which she described as "spectacularly humbling." She recalled playing a festival set at nine in the morning while Limp Bizkit and 30 Seconds to Mars were the headliners later that day. Even so, she sounds optimistic about the future. She praised the current state of live music and signed off with the words: "I will be back." For fans hoping to see her on stage soon, she also dropped a promising hint in the caption: "I want to tour more than anything. And I want to sing. That's what keeps my soul and body happy."