After a rough and violent first album in 1991, Courtney Love's band (who has since married Kurt Cobain) breaks up, then reforms with a new rhythm section and records this first album for a major label. The music is more controlled, the writing more concise, more impactful, and the production more polished, making it the female counterpart to Nirvana's Nevermind (Cobain having informally helped his wife and clearly having influenced her a lot). But since its beginnings, more has been said about Courtney Love for her private life than for her music. This is still the case with this album, which is released four days after Kurt Cobain's suicide... Today, as the time of scandals has passed, Live Through This remains one of the best albums of this troubled era.