Musician and actress: Cobain widow Courtney Love turns 60

These days, Courtney Love lives in London. “I’m an Anglophile. I love London. It’s my favorite city and the best place I’ve ever lived,” the grunge singer, who turns 60 today on July 9, recently told the “Standard.” “Am I an English lady? Well, I have a gardener, so maybe I am.”

Love has not been particularly ladylike in the past, however. “I am completely unlikable and will never apologize for that. I always wanted to be perceived as a bitch, I have never wanted to be liked.” In London, Love has worked as a DJ in recent years, on her autobiography, new solo music and film projects, among other things.

Because even though she is often perceived that way in public, Love was never just the wife and then the widow of the far more famous Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. She has released numerous successful albums with her band Hole and solo, and has also acted in numerous films. In 1996, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in “The Ugly Truth”.

Nevertheless, a fateful week in April 1994 still overshadows Love’s life to this day: First, her then husband, Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, took his own life. Four days later, “Live Through This”, Hole’s second album, was released, which was enthusiastically celebrated and helped the band achieve a worldwide breakthrough. Love withdrew from public life and only appeared at a concert four months later, in tears.

Never quite got over Cobain

To this day, the memory of Cobain dominates the singer’s life, and her relationship with their daughter Frances Bean, born in 1992, is considered complicated. “If he came back now, I would have to kill him for what he did to us.” Her life went on, of course, but she never completely got over Cobain, says Love.

“I’ve had great love affairs since Kurt. I probably should have remarried, too. But I just couldn’t put my crown and dress from back then in a box and become a woman-someone-who-used-to-be-Courtney-Love,” says the singer.

“There’s shock, wailing, giving up, remembering, huge emotional swings, fake smiles, ugly crying,” Courtney continued. “I’ve felt like I’ve gotten over it several times, and then it’s come back a few years later. You’re over it when you’re over it, which is probably never.”

Not a fan of Madonna, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift

Love was born in 1964 as Courtney Michelle Harrison in San Francisco and spent most of her childhood in various homes. She also struggled with drugs and alcohol for a long time and spent a lot of time in rehab clinics. But she is now clean, Love claims.

She still likes to insult and provoke people – she recently did it again in an interview. “It’s wonderful that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but many of them become clichés,” she told the “Standard”.

For example, she likes Patti Smith or Joni Mitchell. She is not a fan of Beyoncé (“I don’t like her music”), Taylor Swift (“not important” and “not interesting as an artist”) or Madonna (“I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me”).