10 Best 1990s Alt-Rock Albums You Need To Hear
8. Hole - Live Through This (1994)
Too Californian to be grunge and not DIY enough to be riot grrrrl, Hole were their own beast. Perhaps they're one of the least distinctively original bands on this list but the Courtney Love-fronted group have penned some of the most instantly recognisable and popular alternative rock songs in the world, including the likes of Celebrity Skin, Malibu and Doll Parts.
Providing the soundtrack to late '90s and early '00s high school films and dominating the mainstream partially due to Love’s relationship with rock icon Kurt Cobain, the band released two classic albums in 1994s Live Through This and 1998s Celebrity Skin.
Live Through This was released only four days after Cobain was found dead but nothing stalled its momentum - not even the constantly denied rumours that he wrote many of the songs on the album.
The truth is that Live Through This took the roughness of the band’s persona and transformed emotional subjects into heavyweight alt-rock bangers. There was a competitiveness in Love to play the same stages as her husband and she channeled this by writing timeless rock songs. A man couldn’t have written a classic on the female experience like this and he couldn’t have transformed the weight of Love’s emotion. Live Through This bellows, it’s traumatic and chilling, but it’s enormous.