Hole – Violet
1995 · Directed by Mark Seliger & Fred Woodward
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Best comments
1.“When I listen to Hole, so do my neighbors.”
More comments
- 2.“Comedy Central: 'Do you have any advice for a young girl moving to Hollywood?' Courtney Love: 'Umm... I'll get libeled if I say it... If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party at the Four Seasons, don't go.'”
- 3.“Can't believe she shot John Lennon.”
The story
Violet is the opening track on Live Through This, Hole's 1994 album, and it went out as a single in 1995. The video was made by portrait photographer Mark Seliger and Rolling Stone art director Fred Woodward. They shot it to look like an early silent film or talkie, with faked-old footage and sound that deliberately drifts out of sync. It even opens on a title card, which almost nobody did in the mid-'90s.
The set is a 1920s-style strip club, cut against little girls in tutus dancing ballet on a theater stage. Love works a pole in period style, then shows up in a tutu herself, and at one point sits on a swinging moon. The dancers were real strippers she picked from Jumbo's Clown Room in Los Angeles, where she'd worked in the '80s. She said she wanted to show the degrading side of putting half-naked women on a pedestal in music videos. It's also the world's first look at bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. Slant ranked it the 25th greatest music video of all time in 2021.
