106. Hole, "Live Through This"

 


This album will always be a little cursed, released four days after Kurt Cobain killed himself and dogged to this day by rumors that Kurt helped write or outright wrote some of the material, a charge surely rooted in the sexism that predominates in the music industry.  And it's too bad, because it's a spectacular album with a ton of great musical ideas and a lot to say.  

Hole's first album, Pretty on the Inside, was more hard-edged punk-flavored rock, and Courtney Love and the band set out with this record to do something different and show more range.  Man, they did it.  Not that it's all gentle melodies; a song like "Plump" is just as hard and angry as anything in Love's husband's catalog.  But take "Miss World," the first single, which starts with gentle strumming and Love singing

I am the girl you know, can't look you in the eye
I am the girl you know, so sick I cannot try
I am the one you want, can't look you in the eye
I am the girl, you know I lie, I lie and lie

It kicks in after this, the strumming getting harder, with a great chord progression (G-Am-Bm-Em-D-C, in case you're wondering) that feels like an arc as she sings "I'm miss world, somebody kill me/Kill me pills."  It builds as the song goes on, becoming more and more thrashy.

"Doll Parts," the second single, has a loose, shambling structure, with some almost lackadaisacal strumming and that great singsongy chorus ("Yeah, they really want you/They really want you, they really do") and the unforgettable line "I want to be the girl with the most cake."  "I Think That I Would Die" has hooks on top of hooks and a great vocal performance by Love, who sings "I want my baby/Who took my baby?," especially poignant in light of the fact that her daughter was actually taken for a brief time following reports that she used drugs during pregnancy.  (The daughter, of course, was Frances Bean Cobain, who seems to have turned out just fine.)

Although all the songs are pretty great, I think the best thing on this album is the last song, "Rock Star (Olympia)," a sly takedown of the riot grrl scene, calling its members out for their enforced uniformity:

Well, I went to school in Olympia
And everyone's the same
And so are you in Olympia
And everyone's the same
We look the same, we talk the same, yeah, yeah
We even fuck the same
Well, I went to school in Olympia

Love did not, in fact, go to school in Olympia, like many of the people she's mocking.  (Funny story - this song was a studio outtake originally just called "Olympia" but the last song on the album was supposed to be another song called "Rock Star" and the artwork had already been printed so this was renamed "Rock Star").

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Yes please.

Comments

  1. GGAugust 17, 2022 at 12:56 PM

    This album is the reason it's impossible for anyone to ever mention Olympia without me hearing "Well I went to school..." in my head and sometimes just singing it out loud. Pretty on the Inside will always be my favorite because it was released in my senior year of high school and could not have spoken more perfectly and directly to me and all my female latter-day punk high school friends, but Live Through This is the one I consistently put on when I want to listen to Hole. In fact, I need to go listen to it right now, BRB

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    Replies
    1. TKAugust 18, 2022 at 8:51 AM

      I was surprised and impressed by how well it held up. Similar story: my kid is now obsessed with a book series called Wings of Fire and so I constantly have Liz Phair's "Supernova" running through my head (which has the line "you're an angel with wings of fire"). Not that I'm complaining, it's a great song, I just hadn't thought about it in 20 years and now I think about it every day.

      My favorite Hole album might be Celebrity Skin, just for the title track alone.

      Delete

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