Alternative rock legend Courtney Love reveals her new musical "obsession", the fast-rising teenage artist she considers "the Gen Z Trent Reznor or Brian Eno"

(Image credit: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Courtney Love is working on a new record with a host of hand-picked collaborators, and has been singing the praises of both old friends and emerging talents on the current music scene.

Hole's former leader teased the new album in a recent interview with The Standard, revealing that guest artists set to appear include former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, godfather to Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, her former Hole bandmate Melissa Auf der Maur, and Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sargent, who's apparently "elevating songs beyond description": "He's a genius!" Love enthuses.

Love is working on the as-yet-unnamed project with producer Butch Walker (Green Day, Weezer, Fall Out Boy) but has also been testing the water by collaborating with some more left-field, emerging producers, including New Jersey-born rapper/singer 070 Shake, and the Los Angeles-raised, Queensland, Australia-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sofia Isella.

Love hails 070 Shake as "a goddess... a purist and a queen", and describes Isella as, "my other obsession".

"Sofia Isella, I think, is either the Gen Z Trent Reznor or Brian Eno; I can’t decide," Love tells The Standard. "She’s also only 19! Unfortunately, that song didn’t make the cut because I was straying too far out of my lane... maybe next album."

Love is decidedly less impressed, however, by PJ Harvey who she's labelled "fucking rude" for ignoring her request to write together.

"I wanted just one of her great iconic Stones guitar riffs," Love says. "We have a relationship; I've endorsed her over the decades, but she chose not to respond to me. So I wrote her about how fucking rude that was. Her manager tried to smooth things over, but it's not okay."

There is no scheduled release date set as yet for Love's ongoing work-in-progress.

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.