Synopsis

Hole perform "Doll Parts" amid stark, dreamlike images of grief and emotional disintegration. Courtney Love appears in a babydoll dress, singing and playing guitar on an ornate bed, then wanders through a bleak garden arranged like a ruined children's tea party. Plaster-wrapped dolls hang from the trees, while a young blond boy moves through the shadows. The predominantly black-and-white video alternates these unsettling tableaux with color fragments and footage of the band performing.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was commissioned after the death of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff. Jennifer Finch of L7 appears as the bassist in the performance scenes.

• Courtney Love supplied several of the video's central ideas, including the babydoll dress, the bed, the bleak garden, and the children's tea-party setting.

• The hanging dolls were added to intensify the video's atmosphere of decay and death. Around one hundred plaster-wrapped dolls were used in the garden imagery.

• The young blond boy was intended as a visual reference to Kurt Cobain, giving the video an additional layer of personal mourning.

• Most of the video was filmed in black and white, with selected color shots interrupting the stark visual style.

• Two broadcast edits circulated: the original version and a producer's version.

• "Doll Parts" received a nomination for Best Alternative Video at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, where it lost to Weezer's "Buddy Holly."