Courtney Love once said Springsteen's saxophones 'don't belong' in rock

Courtney Love has long been outspoken and contentious, and her relationship with Bruce Springsteen has reflected that complexity. Over the years she has made both pointed criticisms and later retractions, at times tempering censure with praise. Her first notable dig at Springsteen came after Hole's 1998 MTV Awards performance of "Celebrity Skin," when she insisted on answering female journalists amid a male-dominated press culture.

She told the room, "proletariat male rock critics have a real Bruce Springsteen problem with, like, denim boomer issues... We want to wear nice f***ing clothes. It's part of what we do." In that moment she used Springsteen as shorthand for a masculine, working-class valorization that she saw as limiting for female artists.

The critique, however, overlooked aspects of Springsteen's own background and politics.

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