alternative-rock-singers

"You look good in my dress I'll get your friends to clean the mess You look good in my clothes I can feel you where the doctor goes"

"The devil's driving my car tonight, and he's drunk He's pissed, he's mad I don't care which of you he fucks up"

"In your endless summer night I'll be on the other side When you're beautiful and dying All the world that you've denied When the water is too deep You can close your eyes and really sleep tonight Tonight"

"You should've loved me baby When redemption's too blind Nature took my soul And sin left a scar so wide Time ravaged my body And now I live in the house Where the red light's always on"

"Oh, make me over I'm all I wanna be A walking study In demonology"

"I want to be the girl with the most cake He only loves those things because he loves to see them break I fake it so real, I am beyond fake And someday you will ache like I ache Someday you will ache like I ache"

"Crash and burn All the stars explode tonight How'd you get so desperate? How'd you stay alive?"

"Asphyxiate all your pain away Don't try to win; it will only end in disgrace Translucetize the cold light of day It's glorious, its terrible, God I need it It's beautiful, it's ravenous; I'll just feed it Coil down to your black dark decay And I will dig my own grave now I'm miss begotten I am the last one you save here It's all gone rotten"

"She spent twenty years like a virus They want to burn the witches inside us Well, yeah, you don't fuck with the Fabulous Four Or you'll spend the rest of your life picking things up off the floor Oh baby, dry your dirty eyes My water breaks like turpentine"

"Don't blush when I rip you open."

"When I was a teenage whore My mother asked me, she said, "Baby, what for?""

"Slutkiss girls, won't you promise her smack? Is she pretty on the inside? Is she pretty from the back? Slutkiss girls, won't you water her rack? Is she pretty on the inside? Is she pretty from the back? Slutkiss girl, molasses, rot blackstrap Is she rotten on the inside Is she ugly, ugly from the back?"

"I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming."

"Look, you've got these highly intelligent imperious girls, but who told them it was their undeniable American right not to be offended? Being offended is part of being in the real world. I'm offended every time I see George Bush on TV! And, frankly, it wasn't very good music."

"I try to place [beautiful imagery] next to fucked up imagery, because that's how I view things … I sometimes feel that no one's taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there's a certain female point of view that's never been given space."

"If I fuckin' die without having written two, three, or four brilliant rock songs... I don't know why I lived my life."

"The American male runs half of the global world and grows up on rock music from day one. If you can alter the psyche of someone who's growing up to be a rapist or a total misogynist, you're creating values and instead of making the void bigger, you're making it smaller."

"Writing songs has a lot to do with your sexuality. I danced for awhile and just being around that made me realize what people use. And if you grow up blessed with a certain beauty or a certain intelligence that enhances your beauty, you can get into a better position in life."

"Releasing those songs into the void, and not having the void answer back, led all of us to splinter off and attempt to make our mark by deconstructing. Instead of going forward with my tunesmithing, I went back to the beginning. And that’s what Pretty on the Inside was about. I said, ‘I’m not going to follow any of the songwriting values that I’ve been learning for a good seven years. Instead, I’m going to set up on my own land and make my own stake, and see where it goes.’ And the next place that takes me is Seattle, where what was happening was so heavy, and so intense."

"My brother, Toby, is six-foot-six, [and] he [went to] Vassar; my other brother, Brown; my sister, without one penny from me or my [step]dad, NYU Law, number one in her class—Jesus, it's such a functional family, I don't know where I came from."

"I do remember not having good social skills [as a child], although I learned them later. I learned them from hanging out at a gay disco, learning them from drag queens; and I learned them in Liverpool, and I learned them in juvenile hall. So, I learned [my social skills] from future criminals, drag queens, and rock stars."

"I didn't know it was such a guy's job. It's like playing football in high heels and lipstick; no wonder it smears."

"After what I've been through, I'd rather die than take drugs again."

"I started chanting when I was living on Hollywood Boulevard, working as a stripper. Within six months, I got my first million dollars and I didn’t have to strip for bucks any more. Then I met Kurt and we still chanted, but we did a lot of drugs together."

"I don't know why I ever succumbed to any of it... [but] I liked the rush of going under. It's such a high—it's like dying. I die, but then I come out prettier."

"When I was fourteen, I was so bloody ugly and I thought I was Kate Moss. I chased this guy named Mark Rennie, who was the hottest photographer in Portland, around, convinced him to [take pictures of me]. I had this big schnoz, I had blusher on, I'm wearing white gloves, and I [was] making new wave faces, and, like, voguing... there was a gap in my teeth, and I was 180 pounds. So if someone calls me ugly, it sort of rolls off my back because it's not about looks, it's about attitude—you get laid on attitude."

"LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages, and people have parents."

"And the sky was all violet I want it again, but violent, more violent I'm the one with no soul One above and one below"

"With me and Kurt, it was either Bonnie and Clyde, Sid and Nancy, or mommy. That's where it got at the end, but the rest of the time it was equal. The equality was based on Bonnie and Clyde, which is fucking goddamn fun. And Romeo and Juliet. But it was also Hamlet and Hamlet. Not Hamlet and Ophelia. These two fucking Hamlets sitting around."

"I didn't ever really talk until I started hanging out in '80 or '81 with the drag queens at the Metropolis [or Met, a gay new wave club] in Portland. I was very, very quiet. So much so that at one point when I was very young I was diagnosed as a probable autistic. And then I started hanging around with bitchy drag queens and with [my friends] Ursula and Robin, and they basically raised me. I found my inner bitch and I ran with her."

"Imagine this: You're peaking. You're in you youth. At the prime of your life. The last thing you want to be is a symbol of heroin use. You've finally met somebody of the opposite gender who you can write with. That's never happened before in your life. The only other person you could ever write with wasn't as good a writer as you, and this person's a better writer than you. And you're in love, you have a best friend, you have a soul-fucking-mate, and you can't even believe it's happening in your lifetime. And as a bonus he's beautiful. And he's rich. And he's a hot rock star to boot. And he's the best fuck that ever walked. And he wants to have babies, and what you want is babies. You've wanted to have babies forever. And he understands everything you say. And he completes your sentences. And he's lazy, but is spiritual, and he's not embarrassed about praying, he's not embarrassed about God, Jesus, none of it. He fucking thinks it's all really cool. He wants to fucking learn the path. He wants to be enlightened. Everything. And there's even some room for you to fix him, which you like, 'cause you're a fixer-upper. He's perfect in almost every fucking way. The only fucking happiness that I ever had. And then it all gets taken away."

"My thing is 'Don't fuck with me.' In real life, real real life, I'm supersensitive, but people tend to think I'm not vulnerable because I don't act vulnerable."

"My goal keeps me alive, and no personal issue is going to interfere with that. If people try to put me in the crazy box–'crazy fucking Courtney'–go ahead. But if you think you’re going to stop me from where I’m going, you’re not going to do it. I work my ass off. I deliver the goddamn goods. And I will deliver them again."

"I punched out Kathleen Hanna... Sonic Youth brought her. I punched her, and she screamed, "I'll take you on, any college in America, any feminist debate," and I said, "But Kathleen, that means you're going to have to read!""

"I used to see media on Althea [Flynt] and she was very wild looking. She had a mohawk and she published Hustler—I thought that was crazy. But when you study her, she was so innocent and frail and sort of birdlike, and sweet. She stayed sweet until she died, but I don't know what happened for her to get into drugs or the things she got into."

"Even though I now feel more confident and happy, I was really paranoid for about a year and a half. Basically, what happened was that I quit taking drugs and I walked out into the world and was sort of in this film that was really well received. So, after years of living a more destructive lifestyle, I had to, instantly, kind of court this world which had incredibly nice value systems, but with protocols that I had never encountered before. And then I had to reconcile these two worlds. You know—I want to live a happier, more productive lifestyle, but the question was, did I want to renounce being in a great rock ’n’ roll band for that? The answer was ‘No way.’"

"The deal with fashion is that proletariat male rock critics have a real Bruce Springsteen problem with denim boomer issues. We as females have thousands and thousands of years of fashion in our DNA. We want to wear nice fucking clothes—it's part of what we do, so I don't have an issue with it. If you have an opportunity to go to the Oscars in a fabulous gown, you're gonna fucking take it. I don't have to listen to a rule. Who made that rule? Some dumb guy."

"Without the benefit of history, there was no way you could be in the middle of all that and understand what it was like. To be a couple that persecuted, and to be such weak people, so frail and reactive, huddling together because the whole world is going [she makes a sound like a bomb going off]. You’ve got your own team, the sectarian left, splintering off and pointing accusing fingers. We’re fucking picking nits off Eddie Vedder and Eddie Vedder is trying to take on the constitution, and the whole fucking world is damning me to the stake. It was insanity. So in reaction to that, I made a record about it."

"Do you remember when you were young, and you’d stare at someone on-stage and think ‘Oh my God—he looked right at me?’ I do, so I have this kind of rescue-fantasy thing. When I see kids in the audience I think, ‘Okay, that’s me, and it would be kind of cool if the person on-stage would come down and save me.’ I’m not going to be able to save every one of them, but I’ll do my best, because I genuinely like kids. If I didn’t have my lust for my art, I probably would have ended up working with them."

"Since I’ve basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I’m not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don’t care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do. … I’m looking for people to help connect me to more fans, because I believe fans will leave a tip based on the enjoyment and service I provide. I’m not scared of them getting a preview. It really is going to be a global village where a billion people have access to one artist and a billion people can leave a tip if they want to. It’s a radical democratization. Every artist has access to every fan and every fan has access to every artist, and the people who direct fans to those artists. People that give advice and technical value are the people we need. People crowding the distribution pipe and trying to ignore fans and artists have no value. This is a perfect system."

"Without, without a doubt Come on and let me out Hey, where the fuck were you when my lights went out?"

"Sister ectoplasma she's incredulous Just like a pro she takes off her dress And she kicks you down in her snow white pumps Just remember it was me who found the lumps"

"He shakes his dead rattle Spittle on his bib And I don't do the dishes I throw them in the crib"

"Every time that I sell myself to you I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to I will tear the petals off of you Rose red, I will make you tell the truth"

"I've got a blister from touching everything I see The abyss opens up It steals everything from me"

"I want my baby Where is my baby? I want my baby Where is my baby?"

"Love hangs herself with the bedsheets in her cell Threw myself on fires for you Ten good reasons to stay alive Ten good reasons that I can't find"

"And I wait staring at the Northern Star I'm afraid it won't lead you very far He's so cold, he will win the world tonight All the angels kneel into the frozen lights Feel their hearts they're cold and white"

"Hush your highness, don't you breathe No, baby, hold me in your arms, I'm shivering But what's all this for? If I was the battle, baby, you have won the war"

"I always said I’d never go to New York until someone pays me—because I’ve seen people come back from New York like desiccated, broken… New York is a tough place if you’re coming out of Port Authority or from Oregon, and they were paying me 356 dollars a day to be on the set [of Sid and Nancy] so that was really wonderful. Then I did Straight To Hell which went straight to video (but) then Andy Warhol noticed me from those two films. Then I got to be in Interview magazine and I got this little measure of celebrity, but with no money (laughs) that sucks… (but) it feels great if you’ve been wanting it. A lot of people like to say, ‘oh I didn’t ask for this, it just happened. I’m the luckiest guy in the world…’ I always wanted it."