It’s technically felt like spring here in Texas for the past few months, but I still can’t shake the Michigander in me that only decides spring starts in April — and with the arrival of spring comes the yearly revival of my favorite album: Live Through This by Hole.
(If any of you have criticisms about one Ms. Courtney Love that you’re tempted to drop in the comments, I simply refuse to hear them. Take your nonsense elsewhere or I’ll keep your names on a shitlist titled “fools who somehow can’t believe Kurt Cobain was depressed.” Thank you in advance!)
Hole is one of those bands I grew up with as a kid — they weren’t my family’s favorite choice, but I heard Violet enough growing up that the band was on my radar. After my parents got divorced, I raided the family CD collection to see what I could find, and I found Live Through This.
The album art alone caught my eye. I was a pretty gawky eight year old who had no fashion sense, and Courtney Love in her tiara, fur coat, and cigarette was the absolute aura of everything I wanted to be: Messy but pretty.
One day I’ll get around to explaining the impact this album has had on me, with all its contrasts of gore and beauty, love and hate, pain and comfort; the way Live Through This has evolved with me as I’ve grown, where the lyrics meant one thing to me as a teenager and something completely different to me now; the way it taught me that femininity and womanhood in reality are nothing like the expectations placed on me.
Until then, I leave you with this Traffic Jam: Miss World, one of the biggest hits from the album and a personal favorite of mine. It’s melodrama and chaos and lovesickness and self-loathing, and it’s the perfect spring song for the angsty teens in all of us.