Edge Rewrite
everything Source code View original
// HTMLRewriter · presentation

This page was redesigned at the edge.

Cloudflare fetched the original article and streamed it through HTMLRewriter to apply an entirely new visual system without rebuilding the source page.

// request.cf · coarse context

A page that knows where it met you.

Only coarse request metadata is shown. This demo does not display or persist visitor IP addresses.

Country
US
Cloudflare location
CMH
Connection
HTTP/2
Language
Not provided

Ray ID: a41ff575bd621330

Jump to content

// Workers AI · dad joke modeIs "Retard Girl" a book title? Does it attract slow readers?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Retard Girl"
First pressing cover art
Single by Hole
B-side
  • "Phonebill Song"
  • "Johnnie's in the Bathroom"
ReleasedJuly 1990 (1990-07)[1]
RecordedMarch 17, 1990 (1990-03-17)
StudioRudy's Rising Star (Los Angeles, California)
Genre
Length4:47[2]
LabelSympathy for the Record Industry
SongwriterCourtney Love
Producers
Hole singles chronology
"Retard Girl"
(1990)		 "Dicknail"
(1991)

"Retard Girl" is the debut single by the American alternative rock band Hole, written by vocalist and guitarist Courtney Love, and released in July 1990 by Sympathy for the Record Industry. Recorded in March 1990, the single was produced by Love's then-husband, James Moreland.[3][4] Love wrote the song the same night after she escaped a violent sexual assault attempt.[5][6]

The lyrics narrate a girl being bullied on a school playground, also making direct references to Horace's Odes, including the Latin verse "velut inter ignis luna minors", which is also inscribed on the back of the single's cover art.

Background

[edit]

Courtney Love wrote "Retard Girl" prior to, or within the first few weeks of, Hole's formation as the song was performed at Hole's second live performance in 1989.[7] According to Love, she wrote the song after escaping a sexual assault attempt while she was working as an erotic dancer at Jumbo's Clown Room in Los Angeles:

After one of my shifts, my friend invited me to this guy’s house. I said no to a drink and then I was in handcuffs, and I was on the floor and there was a video camera on. I screamed my mother fucking ass off. I was disposable. Nobody would’ve missed me. The one shoe, the ripped clothes. I get into my little apartment and this is the magic part, I plugged in the fucking guitar and I wrote "Retard Girl."[6]

Recording

[edit]

"Retard Girl" was recorded at the band's first studio session on March 17, 1990,[8] at Rudy's Rising Star in Los Angeles.[2] The band was given $500, by Sympathy for the Record Industry's president Long Gone John, to record the session, which was initially meant to only include the song, however, others were recorded alongside it, including "Turpentine", "Phonebill Song" and "Johnnie's in the Bathroom." "Retard Girl" along with the latter songs were released in full form on The First Session EP in 1997.[2] The session was produced by Love's then-husband, James Moreland, with additional production by lead guitarist Eric Erlandson.

Composition

[edit]

Musically, the song was performed in drop D tuning and follows a simple structure; opening with a bass line, progressing to distorted guitars and featuring aggressive vocals. The composition highlights the band's initial no wave and punk rock-influenced sound.[9]

The lyrics in the song tell a story of a girl being ridiculed on the school playground.[10] The line "As shines the moon among the lesser fires" (Latin: velut inter ignis luna minors) in the second verse of the song is a direct reference to Roman poet Horace, extracted from Odes, a book of Latin lyric poems composed in 23 BC.[a]

Love revealed the meaning of "Retard Girl" in a 1990 interview with Flipside, a Los Angeles fanzine: "'Retard Girl', that's our single. It's about getting picked on in school, anyone who's ever been picked on in a big way, or a small way. I just got this vibe one day about how when I was in school I was really shy and sort of picked on and I swore that I would never pick on people who were picked on."[11]

All releases of the single list the songwriting credits collectively as Hole, however BMI's website shows "Retard Girl" as written by Love alone.[12]

B-sides

[edit]

The single also featured two b-sides, "Phonebill Song" and "Johnnie's in the Bathroom". "Johnnie's in the Bathroom" is a noise track featuring Courtney Love reading diary entries to a distorted guitar playing the instrumentals of "Tradition", and later, "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof.[b] Additionally, the track is accompanied by unidentified lounge music fading in and out of the mix, as well as what seems to be a recorded conversation between Love and a phone sex operator.

"Phonebill Song" is a punk-style track composed of three chords, and seems to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Love spending too much time talking on the telephone, with lyrics like "Before I go to sleep / Get it away from me / Gotta run the phonebill up."

Packaging and artwork

[edit]

The single was released by Sympathy for the Record Industry in 1990 on 7" only. The first pressing was on white vinyl with inserts, followed by blue and pink versions later on. Generic black vinyl versions were also issued later with a golden color scheme on the front cover. Several different versions of the front cover were produced in differing color schemes, which features a picture of a young woman hanging upside down from a tree limb. The woman in the photograph is Kat Bjelland of Babes In Toyland, a longtime friend and bandmate of Love, and the photo was taken in guitarist Eric Erlandson's backyard.[13]

The back cover also features the Latin inscription "velut inter ignis luna minors", a verse from Horace referenced in the song.[14]

Reception

[edit]

Emily Mackay of NME called "Retard Girl" a "perfect intro [to the band's] slow, tarry, Mudhoney-ish early sound. Starting off with ominous bass notes before a wall of slick noise hits, it circles round Courtney's tradition obsessions of abject social outcasts and angry disgust."[15] Scott Morrow of LA Weekly described the track as "some of the most unrelenting stuff I've heard in a long time."[16]

Jason Ankeny of AllMusic gave the release five out of ten stars, noting: "Though clearly intended as a profound statement on the intolerance and depravity of humankind, "Retard Girl" is little more than a catalog of ugly childhood behaviors and impulses that mistakes shock value for substance. Eric Erlandson's lumpy, lurching guitar possesses none of the raw lyricism evidenced on subsequent Hole records, but Courtney Love's ear-splitting screech does achieve some kind of catharsis."[10]

Of the b-sides featured on the "Retard Girl" single, Ankeny called "Phonebill Song" "tuneless" and likened "Johnnie's in the Bathroom" to "a tedious exercise merging spoken word narrative, tape montage, and pig-squealing guitar feedback."[10]

Track listing

[edit]

US 7" single (SFTRI 53)

  1. "Retard Girl" (Courtney Love) – 4:47
  2. "Phonebill Song" (Love, Eric Erlandson) – 1:48
  3. "Johnnie's in the Bathroom" (Love, Erlandson) – 2:17

Credits and personnel

[edit]

Hole

Technical

Art direction

  • Johnny Siko – front cover photo
  • Vickie Berndt – back cover photo

Notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ "As shines the moon among the lesser fires" is an English translation of a lyric (Latin: velut inter ignis luna minors) from Horace's Book I of Odes, written c. 23 BC.
  2. ↑ The opening guitar in "Johnnie's in the Bathroom" from 0:00 to 0:40 is identical to "Tradition", while the closing guitar number is a rendition of "If I Were a Rich Man" (see the 101 Strings Orchestra renditions of the Fiddler on the Roof numbers for auditory comparison).

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ Strong 2004, p. 696.
  2. 1 2 3 "Hole: The First Session". AllMusic. Archived from the original on August 26, 2026.
  3. ↑ "The Courtney Love and James Moreland Divorce". Public Records Site. Archived from the original on January 30, 2012.
  4. ↑ Bush, John. "The Leaving Trains". AllMusic. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Courtney Love". Behind the Music. Viacom Media Networks. June 21, 2010. VH1.
  6. 1 2 Gardner, Chris (January 27, 2026). "The Biggest Moments From Courtney Love's New Sundance Film Festival Documentary 'Antiheroine'". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on August 26, 2026.
  7. ↑ "Holelive.com – The Ultimate Hole Trading Community". Archived from the original on July 12, 2011. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
  8. ↑ True 2009, p. 316.
  9. ↑ Ferrier, Aimee (July 10, 2023). "The first record Courtney Love fell in love with". Far Out Magazine. Retrieved September 15, 2026.
  10. 1 2 3 Ankeny, Jason. "Retard Girl – Hole". AllMusic. Archived from the original on December 3, 2021.
  11. ↑ Al & Gus (September 1990). "Hole". Flipside (68). Los Angeles, California.
  12. ↑ "BMI Repertoire Search: Retard Girl". Broadcast Music, Inc. Retrieved September 15, 2026. (Note: Requires manual search.)
  13. ↑ Brite 1998, pp. 103–104.
  14. ↑ Hole. "Retard Girl" (cover artwork). 1990. Sympathy for the Record Industry. Photo available here.
  15. ↑ Mackay, Emily (July 27, 2009). "Lived Through This: Hole's 10 Finest Moments". NME. Retrieved September 15, 2026.
  16. ↑ Morrow, Scott (November 9, 1990). "Babes in Toyland, Hole, Lovedolls, Bootleg, Weatherbell at Club with No Name". LA Weekly. p. 117 – via Newspapers.com.

Sources

[edit]
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Retard_Girl&oldid=1375821778"