Songfacts®:

• The first part of this song, "Pretty On The Inside," refers to Hole frontwoman Courtney Love's life. In her youth, Love supported herself by working as a striper in her travels. This explains why words like "slut" are used in the first part of this song.
  
  "Clouds," the second part of the song, refers to drug addiction. At first, this song seems to be incomprehensible but, it makes sense with a little effort. The word "cloud" is used as synonym of "drug": "So many I could have done, but clouds."
  
  The lyrics, "On acid stars you're getting there" and "I looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow, It's just an illusion I recall" are references to drugs and how they can get you high, or bring you down. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Elise - Oklahoma City, OK
• This is part of Hole's debut album, Pretty On The Inside, released around the same time as Nirvana's Nevermind. Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love had gotten together by this point, and would marry the following year. As Nirvana went screaming to stardom, Hole went on the back burner as Love found herself preoccupied (she and Cobain had a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, in 1992). When Hole finally released their next album, Live Through This, it was in April 1994, just one week after Cobain's death by suicide. The Nirvana story consumed the music press, but Hole still found an audience on their own merits. Live Through This sold well over a million copies and the songs "Doll Parts" and "Violet" got a lot of airplay.