3 misconceptions (Courtney Love, Liz Phair, Christine McVie)

Or: When these songs come on, this is what I want to shout over them.

1) Hole’s “Malibu” was written by Courtney Love, almost exclusively, with minor credit to Hole’s lead guitarist Eric Erlandson and Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.

Recorded and released five years after Kurt Cobain’s death, it’s easy to assume that the song’s a eulogy for Cobain: “Oh, come on be alive again / Don't lay down and die!”

But Love insists it was written for Jeff Mann, an ex-boyfriend who lived in (hang onto your hat) Malibu. Per Love, he was her “first real boyfriend,” and they did a ton of drugs together in the early eighties.

Fans will remind you that Cobain went to rehab at Passages Malibu Addiction Treatment Center before his suicide; Love went too.

It’s as clear as her Joy Division allusion in the post-bridge interlude—until it isn’t.

2) Liz Phair’s first album Exile in Guyville is a track-for-track response to The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St.

In 1993, SPIN called her a “brat… writing primitive pop songs about all the boys she’s fucked and how they soon fucked her over.” But, the reviewer concedes, the music is good.

Her song “Flower” shouts at the Stones’ “Let It Loose.” When asked about interpretation, Mick Jagger said: “I think Keith wrote that, actually. … I don’t think that song has any semblance of meaning.”

Phair’s “Flower,” on the other hand, is pure, unshakable, dominant sex: “Obnoxious, funny, rude, and mean / I want to be your blowjob queen.” (!)

3) Christine McVie wrote “You Make Loving Fun” for Fleetwood Mac amidst her affair with the band’s lighting designer. “Sweet, wonderful you,” she coos. “You make me happy with the things you do.”

In an effort to smother suspicions from her bandmate and husband, John McVie, she told him the song was about her dog. Despite the sensual language—“Don't, don't break the spell / It would be different and you know it will”—I’m not sure how quick I would be to swallow the reality of my lover writing a song for a dog.

She concurrently was writing “Everywhere,” one of the most subtle yet sublime love songs out there (not to mention “Little Lies,” “Oh Daddy,” “Songbird”).

Personally, the hardest part for me would be to accept that a man I loved believed me when I told him I wrote a love song about my dog, begging: “Don't, don't break the spell.”