Live Through This

1	Violet 3:24
2	Miss World 2:58
3	Plump 2:34
4	Asking for It 3:29
5	Jennifer's Body 3:40
6	Doll Parts 3:31
7	Credit in the Straight World 3:10
8	Softer, Softest 3:20
9	She Walks on Me 3:24
10	I Think That I Would Die 3:36
11	Gutless 2:15
12	Rock Star 2:42

Barnes & Noble

By the spring of 1994, nearly everyone recognized that Courtney Love had mastered the celebrity side of being a rock star, but few knew whether she had the musical chops to match. Then, barely a week after the suicide of her husband, Kurt Cobain, Live Through This (a title matched in its eerie prophecy only by Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death) came barreling at rock fans with an articulate ferocity. It was as if Love had ingested every annoying conceit of late twentieth-century American mall culture and spat them back out with an intensity that recalled Nirvana, the Sex Pistols, and Iggy and the Stooges. Just consider the titles: "Miss World" (which features the seething chorus "I made my bed/I'll lie in it/I made my bed/I'll die in it"), "Plump," "She Walks on Me," "Doll Parts," and "Jennifer's Body." Many bands trafficked in fury, but few matched Hole's propensity to make it hummable. The recording topped various critics' polls, and Love went on to become the darling of many a fashion designer, film director, and plastic surgeon. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

Courtney Love completely revamped Hole before recording their second album, keeping only Eric Erlandson in the lineup. That is one of the reasons why Live Through This sounds so shockingly different from Pretty on the Inside, but the real reason is Love's desire to compete in the same commercial alternative rock arena as her husband, Kurt Cobain. In fact, many rumors have claimed that Cobain ghostwrote a substantial chunk of the album, and while that's unlikely, there's no denying that his patented stop-start dynamics, bare chords, and punk-pop melodies provide the blueprint for Live Through This. Love adds her signature rage and feminist rhetoric to the formula, but the lyrics that truly resonate are the ones that unintentionally predict Cobain's suicide. For all the raw pain of the lyrics, Live Through This rarely sounds raw because of the shiny production and the carefully considered dynamics. Despite this flaw, the album retains its power because it was one of the few records patterned on Nevermind that gets the formula right, with a set of gripping hooks and melodies that retain their power even if they follow the predictable grunge pattern. Stephen Thomas Erlewine