Courtney Love says she made her long-awaited new album during a period when she genuinely wondered whether she would live to make another one.
In a new Instagram video, the Hole frontwoman said her health deteriorated after she went to England in 2019. “My body just exploded,” Love recalled, saying she spent significant time in hospitals, lost her hair, fell to around 100 pounds and was told by doctors that she was going to die.
She said she refused to accept what doctors were telling her and eventually recovered, telling followers that she is now healthy and trying to determine how to return publicly with music she has spent years making.
The album is finished, according to Love, and its creation became inseparable from the health crisis. In the caption accompanying the video, she wrote that she believed at the time it would be her final record, so she made the album she had always wanted to make.
Love Says She Wrote and Recorded Between Hospital Stays
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Love said she was in hospitals frequently during the period when the record was taking shape. “I was in hospitals a lot. I almost died,” she said. “I lost all my hair. I was about 100 pounds.” According to Love, doctors told her that she was going to die. She said she did not believe them.
She explained that reaction through a childhood analogy about adults insisting that “red was blue.” Love said she had learned not to surrender her own perception simply because an authority figure told her something different, and she carried that mindset into her health crisis.
“And so when they said you’re going to die, I just didn’t believe them,” she said. Love said she eventually improved and is now healthy. “I just wasn’t public about being sick,” she added. “I don’t wanna be public. I’m fine now.” Page Six reported that Love deliberately kept the illness largely out of public view at the time.
Love Previously Said She Nearly Died From Anemia in 2020
Love said the crisis followed her arrival in England in 2019 and described hospital stays, severe weight loss and hair loss. She did not name a disease, condition or diagnosis in the new video.
Also, in 2020, she specifically identified anemia, saying she had dropped to 97 pounds and endured months of debilitating pain before eventually finding treatment that helped. Billboard noted that earlier anemia disclosure.
In March 2021, Love publicly disclosed that she had been severely ill and bedridden and had nearly died in a hospital the previous August.
The Album Is Finished, but Love Is Still Figuring Out Its Release
Whatever uncertainty surrounded Love while she was making the record, she now speaks about the finished music with confidence. “It’s done. My record’s done,” she said in the video, adding that it has actually been finished for some time and that she believes it is “a really good record.”
The project would be Love’s first full-length release since Hole’s Nobody’s Daughter arrived in 2010. Her last album released solely under her own name was America’s Sweetheart in 2004. Love has not announced a title or release date in the new post. She said she is trying to work out how to roll out the music and reenter public life after years spent largely away from the album cycle.
Her caption also points to the extensive group of musicians and collaborators involved in the project. Love tagged Michael Stipe, Echo & the Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant, former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, Butch Walker, Billie Joe Armstrong, Eg White, Justin Parker, Suzy Shinn and Jonathan Daniel.
‘Antiheroine’ Has Already Shown Part of Her Return to Music
The album has also become an important part of Love’s 2026 documentary Antiheroine. Directed by Edward Lovelace and James Hall, the film premiered at Sundance in January and follows Love during her life in London as she confronts her past and works her way back toward recording.
In the film, Love describes the album as a way of reclaiming her own story after decades in which her life has often been interpreted publicly through controversy, addiction, Hole and her marriage to Kurt Cobain.
Love told followers she is healthy, thanked them for waiting and asked for more patience while she works out her return. “I want to tour more than anything,” Love wrote. “And I want to sing.”