Hole: Live Through This [DGC / GEFFEN]

Why you'll love it

Live Through This is one of the defining albums of '90s alternative rock: Courtney Love's raw, fearless songs about beauty, motherhood and power, set to huge hooks. It went platinum and topped critics' polls in 1994.

This edition

• DGC / Geffen pressing
• Produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie

About the album

On their first album Hole were a noisy, confrontational punk band; on Live Through This, Courtney Love and company kept every bit of that fury but sharpened it into songs with real melodies and pop hooks. Producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie (fresh from Radiohead's Pablo Honey) and mixers Scott Litt and J Mascis gave it a big, bruising sound.

"Violet" opens with one of the great quiet-loud explosions of the decade, "Miss World" and "Doll Parts" are snarling and heartbreaking at once, "Softer, Softest" is haunting, and "Asking for It" and "Jennifer's Body" tackle violence against women head-on. Love took the title from a line in Gone with the Wind, and the record more than lived up to it: critics crowned it one of the best albums of 1994, and it topped the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll.

Also at Kops: more Hole on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On DGC / Geffen, a reissue of the 1994 album.