The Last Dinner Party have revealed that Courtney Love helped advise them on how to censor their ‘Nothing Matters’ lyrics for radio.
The original version of the quintet’s debut single has a chorus where vocalist Abigail Morris sings: “and I will fuck you, like nothing matters.”
On the radio and during recent TV performances on The Graham Norton Show in the UK and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Stateside, they changed the word “fuck” to “have”.
Speaking to Music Week, Morris revealed how Love advised them on changing the lyric when meeting them at a festival.
“We met her at The Great Escape and at the time we were in agony over what on earth we were going to use instead of [the F-word] because that’s the whole point,” Morris said.
“After the show she stormed up the dressing room stairs saying, ‘I’ve got it!’ She had an empty packet of painkillers and she’d scrawled ‘punch’ on there.
“She was kinda pitching to us. We were like, ‘Yeah, thanks!’ We appreciated her passion.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Morris expressed the band’s love for Florence + The Machine, who they supported at a 2023 gig and who recently told the band that they were the winners of BBC Radio 1’s Sound Of 2024 poll.
“Florence Welch was someone we spoke to who really made an impact on us,” Morris said. “She has an almost identical story to us. She got signed at the same age we did, to the same label and has a similar approach to art and music in the sense of world building and storytelling.
“She was just so wise and kind and generous. She’s someone that we really look up to and she’s a really wonderful person to have on our side.”
The much-hyped London band and NME 100 alumni are due to release their first full-length record on February 2, 2024 via Island (pre-order/pre-save here). It’ll feature recent singles ‘Nothing Matters’, ‘Sinner’, ‘My Lady Of Mercy’, ‘On Your Side’ and ‘Caesar On A TV Screen’.
‘Nothing Matters’, meanwhile, came in at Number Five on NME‘s ’50 best songs of 2023’ feature last month, while the band also won the prestigious BRITs Rising Star award.
They will release their debut album, ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’, on February 2.