Every Album I Love is a series where I attempt to write about every album that I love, or die trying. Sometimes I’ll explain why I love them, sometimes I’ll tell the stories behind how I fell in love with them, sometimes I’ll do both. Most importantly, I hope you love them too.

Unusually for me, I can’t remember when I first heard Hole. I guess it was probably on the Evening Session on Radio 1, the place I most often heard new music, but no specific memory springs to mind. I was certainly aware of them before I heard them, because I was a huge Nirvana fan for a couple of years before Live Through This came out, and also read the NME and Melody Maker every week. At that time, even those who weren’t music fans were aware of Kurt and Courtney, even if they didn’t know about Hole.

I certainly didn’t hear Live Through This when it first came out in April 1994, when the world was grieving Cobain’s death. I suspect it wasn’t until the following year that I bought the album, at a time when Nirvana were still my favourite band, and many albums I bought were Nirvana-adjacent, or at least vaguely in the same genre. Initially it was one of a handful of favourites from my limited collection, but somewhere along the way it became the one. Nirvana may have been my first love, but Hole were my first obsession.

It helped that I had a friend who was even more obsessed than I was, and we egged each other on. We tracked down every Hole record we could, rare singles, bootlegs, everything. I even bought their cover of ‘Gold Dust Woman’ on vinyl despite not owning a record player. We had posters and merch. Articles torn from the NME, and videos taped from MTV (including this one of Courtney interrupting a Madonna interview). I was gutted my friend had been at the Reading Festival in 1995 to see them perform when I had been too young to be allowed to go. I even wrote an essay on Hole’s lyrics for my Sixth Form English class.

When a new album, Celebrity Skin finally came out in August of 1998, we were there at the record store the moment it opened, and spent days listening and analysing. Then in summer of 1999 they finally toured Europe for the first time in years and we went to see them in London, and Glastonbury, and Paris, the first and only time I have travelled abroad specifically to see a band. The Brixton Academy show in particular remains one of my favourites of all time, despite Courtney nearly causing a serious situation by encouraging people to get up on stage, causing a massive crowd surge to the front. I had to help one girl over the barrier at the front to avoid being crushed before swiftly getting myself out of the melee to the side of the room.

The other thing that reinforced my Hole obsession was the way the whole world seemed to hate Courtney. It was like being a fan of one of those sports teams that are hated by opposing fans, but that hatred only spurs their supporters onto greater love. The more Courtney was criticised, the more I defended her. There were the conspiracy theorists who thought she’d murdered Kurt, and the bog standard misogynists who didn’t believe that but thought his death was somehow her fault anyway. There were the other conspiracy theorists who thought that Kurt had written or co-written all Hole’s songs, the standard bullshit that any female musicians who are in relationships with male musicians get. And always Hole were viewed through the lens of Courtney, and Courtney through the lens of Kurt. The music never seemed to be judged on its’ own merits.

Over time, my obsession with Hole waned. Not because I stopped liking the music, just because they no longer really existed. They formally disbanded in 2002, by which point they had already been a few years without any new material. I found my tastes in music changing, and didn’t listen to them all that much. My thoughts on Courtney also matured. I still think she is a remarkable, intelligent, talented woman, but that didn’t mean I had to defend her in every circumstance. She has been very right about some things (like speaking out about Harvey Weinstein long before others did), but also has said and done plenty of stuff which is not great, to say the least (not entirely surprising for someone who has been through all she has been through).

Hole ‘reformed’ in 2010, but it was really just Courtney backed by a load of randos. I went to see them live, at the Brixton Academy once again, with my obsessed friend from my teenage years and the woman who was shortly to become my wife (who had also been a teenage fan). It was one of the worst gigs I’ve been to, more like an extended rehearsal than a real show. Two gigs, same band, same venue, just over a decade apart, but the contrast could not have been greater.

It made me start to doubt my entire Hole fandom. Maybe I had left them behind, maybe they were never as good as I thought they were. Maybe my tastes had just changed. Then I listened to Live Through This again, and it was just as stunning and ever. If anything time had made me appreciate it even more. At the time, my teenage self had been swept along by the anger and energy. This was all still present and correct, but the older me appreciated the craft, the songwriting all the more.

Almost every song on the record is outstanding. There are the obvious hits like Violet, Miss World and Doll Parts, but also songs like Plump, Gutless and Jennifer’s Body that would have been the best songs on most other albums. The combine a classic sense of structure and melody with a punk energy, with unnervingly raw and honest lyrics. If debut album Pretty on the Inside had the rawness and anger, without quite having the songs to back it up, and the following album Celebrity Skin, had the gloss and the melodies, but lacked a bit of grit, Live Through This was absolutely the best of both worlds. The only slight misstep was closing song Rock Star, which was actually a slight song called Olympia (an amusing but inessential satire of the DIY and lo-fi scenes in that town, which was perfect b-side material). Even that was only because the song had to be substituted in at the last minute as the original Rock Star included the line “How’d you like to be Nirvana, say you’d rather die”, which was of course not something they could release shortly after Kurt’s death.

After a period of time where I’d hardly listened to Hole at all, Live Through This is back to being one of my most listened to albums, and each time I’m impressed at how well it stands up, over 30 years after its’ original release. To me, it stands the test of time better than any other alt-rock album of the era. Better than Siamese Dream, better than Vitalogy, better (whisper it) than Nevermind.

I doubt it will ever quite get the recognition I feel it deserves, but I do think there has been a quiet reappraisal of it over recent years. As Courtney becomes less prevalent as a cultural figure, (although still occasionally provoking controversy, as when some fairly mild comments on Taylor Swift and Beyonce went viral), people seem more prepared to judge the album on its’ merits, rather on their opinions of Courtney. I may have been (read: definitely was) wrong about a lot of stuff when I was a teenager. I was just a stupid kid back then, but I was right about few things, and one of them was the greatness of Live Through This.