Would be interested in the views of the youngsters here...

[solidgoldbrass]

Because some days I think a clueless, whinyarse who just happened to have a newsworthy dead husband, and some days I think she's a genuinely great songwriter and musician who. like many great musicians, had an unfortunate drug habit.

Video won't load for me, SGB. Who and what is it?

(It's Hole (Courtney Love) - Doll Parts) I don't know if I count as a youngster any more... (27)... but I have the same issue as you. I can never decide what I think of her.
What I absolutely don't doubt is she is treated by the media as some kind of hysterical parasitical witch who shows too much of her body and isn't a good mum. If she were a man (say the widower of a female rockstar) I don't think most of her antics would have raised an eyebrow to be honest.

I love her music but am not at all young (early 40s), sorry. I totally agree with Fork's second paragraph.

Hester, it's Courtney Love, of Hole.

I'm mixed on her. But I think she's been on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol.

But the lyrics to that song... They just remind me of the whole sex industry, in a way. Did anyone else get that?

I think the song (not one of my favourites) is about her relationship with Kurt. I think he collected dolls, and the references to veins/cake are about their drug taking together.

I liked celebrity skin.
I don't know whether I "like" her or not. I don't read much about her or whatever so I don't have her impinging on me to form an opinion!
It must be bloody awful having a husband commit suicide and so terribly violently, and so young. She had a young child when it happened I think? Just awful.
She's a rockstar isn't she. A proper old fashioned one. So, about what she gets up to really.

I'm not young either

Ah, ok. I agree with most of what's said above. I liked Celebrity Skin when it came out, that alone makes me not a youngster. I think Courtney Love seems pretty damaged while her daughter seems pretty balanced, but it's hard to have anything beyond a filtered perception of someone via the media so I could be entirely wrong.

I'm 21. I couldn't care less about her and what she does. Shes her own person so if she wants to she can do as she pleases.

I agree she is a proper old fashioned rock star, and one of very few female ones. She gets a lot of stick for doing things make rock stars have always done.

One of her songs, "Asking for it", is about when she stage dived once and men in the audience tore her clothes off and sexually assaulted her. She was pretty much damned and blamed for this and wrote the song about it.

I went to a few Hole gigs in my youth and they were the only gigs where I could get anywhere near the front without being bashed out of the way by (much bigger) men. She is extraordinarily charismatic.

Her music is brilliant for dancing round the house yelling at the top of your voice, not that I ever do that being in my 40s of course

I'm 23, I don't really have an opinion (is that bad?)

When I was a teenager there was a lot of hero-worship of Kurt Cobain among my peers (who, remember, would have been about 3 or 4 when he died) and fervent discussion about conspiracy theories, and therefore a lot of vitriol about her in general, but then I did seem to hang out with a load of women-haters at the time.

I formed my own opinion that Nirvana are overrated but not really sure what I think about Courtney at all. When you put it that way Sardine it does sound really sad. I think as a teenager you forget that really shocking events like this affect real humans in very immediate ways, whereas actually it's kind of ridiculous to think that someone would be completely unaffected by something like that.

Oh, I'm actually 24

It is sad.

Like Paula Yate's children finding her. Whenever they are getting slated in the press I remember that. Just horrendous.

i do think that the media encourage us to see "slebs" as not real people with actual feelings and stuff.