Live Through This by Hole

Live Through This, Hole's second album, came out on DGC on April 12, 1994, and it's a scream with a melody wrapped around it. They recorded it in late 1993 with Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie producing, and Scott Litt and J Mascis mixed it. The rough hardcore of the early days gives way to real songs with real shape, and Courtney Love has said she wanted to shock anyone who thought the band had no gentle side, without losing the harshness.

Love sings and plays guitar, with Eric Erlandson on guitar, Patty Schemel on drums and Kristen Pfaff on bass. The lyrics and the packaging keep circling beauty, motherhood and milk, with jabs at elitism and at violence against women, and the title comes from a line in Gone with the Wind. "Violet" swings between a sulk and an explosion, "Miss World" wobbles from sweet to sour, and "Doll Parts" is a raw, aching lament that rises to a howl. Kurt Cobain, Love's husband, added backing vocals to two tracks when he dropped by the studio; he died less than a week before the album came out.

It was the only Hole album with Pfaff, who died two months after its release. Critics loved it, it charted in nine countries and went platinum in the US in April 1995, and by 2010 it had sold more than 1.6 million copies there. Rolling Stone put it at 106 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums, and NME ranked it 84 on its own.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.