Courtney Love is no stranger to feuds. The Hole lead singer has been outspoken since her career took off at the height of the grunge movement in the 1990s, expressing her opinions about everything from music to feminism to fashion. In doing so, she has taken aim at modern industry darlings like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Beyoncé, in addition to her rock contemporaries. Her most famous feuds, in fact, include longstanding conflicts with her late husband, Kurt Cobain’s, Nirvana bandmates (particularly Dave Grohl) as well as a dispute with Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna that ended in physical assault. A complex, unpredictable public figure, Love can be difficult to understand from the outside—a quality that is most visible, perhaps, in her relationship to Bruce Springsteen.

Through the years, she has made both subtle digs and outright criticisms of the rock legend. However, in a rare move for Love, she has also gone back on several of her comments. She even apologized on one occasion, tempering her censure with praise. Indeed, Love’s attitude toward Springsteen is complicated, marked by ebbs and flows that provide insight into her thought process and general attitude toward her fellow artists.

Courtney Love Has Been Critical of What Bruce Springsteen Represents

Love’s first public disparagement of Springsteen came during the press conference after the 1998 MTV Awards, during which Hole had performed their hit single, “Celebrity Skin.” During the conference, Love insisted on answering questions from female journalists in response to the male-dominated, misogynistic attitude of the era. One journalist asked about Love’s decision to wear high fashion in spite of grunge’s intentionally lowbrow aesthetic, to which Love responded, “Well, you know the deal is about fashion is that proletariat male rock critics have a real Bruce Springsteen problem with, like, denim boomer issues. We as females have thousands and thousands of years of fashion in our DNA. We want to wear nice f***ing 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 and be absolutely fabulous, you’re gonna f***ing take it. I don’t have to listen to a rule. Who made that rule? Some dumb guy. Am I right?”

In her response, Love used Springsteen as a representation not only of all things hypermasculine but also of the valorization of the working class that pervaded music at the time. Indeed, during the latter half of the twentieth century, and especially within grunge, there was a persistent pressure to avoid “selling out.” Musicians were considered cool insofar as they identified with the starving artist aesthetic. Therefore, opulent outward signs of wealth, such as haute couture, were considered antithetical to “true art.” Love was correct in calling attention to the tightrope that this expectation forced female artists to walk: On one hand, female musicians were maligned for selling out. On the other hand, they were still expected to adhere to rigid heteronormative beauty standards. In simplistic terms, Love was challenging the idea that being a rock star meant eschewing all things traditionally feminine. Springsteen was mere collateral damage in this short verbal manifesto.

Still, while Love had reason to call out the unfair expectations of the time, her appraisal of Bruce Springsteen lacked nuance and missed the root of the latter’s artistry and message. Springsteen was not posturing in his leather and denim—he was raised in a working-class area of Southern New Jersey and has been open about the rampant crime and poverty that characterized his neighborhood. Later, he spent much of his youth and early career in New York City, where he became enmeshed with the punk movement. His music was even imbued with—and remains imbued with—progressive ideals that challenge capitalism, the American government, and its patriarchal status quo. By interpreting his masculine aesthetic as the pinnacle of patriarchy, Love failed to understand Springsteen’s authenticity, artistry, or sociopolitical radicalism.

Courtney Love Criticized One of Springsteen’s Musical Trademarks but Later Took It Back

In 2014, Love brought up Springsteen yet again in the ninth installment of her now-deleted “Love on Love” YouTube series. In the video, she told fans of the time she attended a Springsteen concert with her friend, Cameron Crowe (the director and music journalist responsible for films like “Say Anything…” and “Almost Famous”). While Springsteen’s famously long shows stretch to nearly four hours, Love said that she “could only last an hour and a half in a three-and-a-half hour show with the Boss.” The issue, she said, was because in her opinion “saxophones don’t belong in rock n’ roll. They just don’t belong.” In the same video, Love admitted, “I really like [Springsteen]. He’s a nice guy.” She also praised his 1982 album Nebraska, whose stripped-down sound notably lacks saxophones.

While Love is certainly entitled to her opinion on saxophones, it’s nevertheless a reductive take. Rock music has taken from jazz, rhythm and blues since its inception, and Springsteen is far from the first to incorporate the saxophone into the genre. Indeed, trailblazers such as Eddie Palmieri, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie have all incorporated the dynamic instrument into their work—and have helped drive the genre forward in the process by pushing its boundaries.

Just a month later, Love said that her negative comments were a “slip of the tongue” and “just a stupid thing blown way out of context.” She also noted that she wrote apology letters to Springsteen explaining: “I can’t go pissing off big rock stars who I like who are nice to me.” Much like her 1989 comment, this more recent dig at Springsteen seems not to be about the Jersey-born rocker at all. Rather it was an instance where Love meant to make a more general point or where she was simply being flippant while Springsteen found himself caught in crossfire.