[4] Frontwoman Courtney Love said that she wanted the record to be "shocking to the people who think that we don't have a soft edge", but maintain a harsh sensibility.

In critical circles, Live Through This is considered a contemporary classic,[5] and was included in Rolling Stone's 2020 updated list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time at number 106.

[9] In March 1992, following the album tour, drummer Caroline Rue and bassist Jill Emery left the band due to artistic differences.

In February 1992, they signed a seven-album deal[14] with Geffen subsidiary DGC Records, reportedly with "an advance of a million dollars and a royalty rate considerably higher than Nirvana's".

[18] During breaks in Nirvana's session, Love and Schemel recorded a number of songs later featured on Live Through This, including "Miss World", "She Walks on Me", "I Think That I Would Die" and "Softer, Softest".

[17] In 1993, the band recruited former Janitor Joe bassist Kristen Pfaff, an accomplished cellist and classically trained musician who brought a new level of professionalism to the group.

[3] Hole hired the producers Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, as she and Cobain had enjoyed their work with Radiohead on their 1993 album Pablo Honey.

After taking a break for dinner, the session devolved into a jam with Cobain on drums, Love and Erlandson on guitars and Slade on bass.

[citation needed] Musician Dana Kletter sang backing vocals on seven songs, including "Violet", "Miss World", "Asking for It", "Doll Parts", "Softer, Softest", and "She Walks on Me".

[23] Certain imperfections were also left in the final mixes, including Love's voice cracking in "Doll Parts", which Geffen executives had asked to be removed.

"[27] The resulting music was starkly less aggressive than the band's former work, blending more structured melodies and smoother arrangements with heavy guitar riffs.

"[3] Love also stated that she had been listening to The Breeders, Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Joy Division while recording the album, and that their work served as primary influences on her at the time.

"[26] Recurrent themes noted on the record by critics and journalists include those of motherhood, depression, body image, child abuse, and elitism, as well as motifs of milk, pregnancy, and suicide.

[33] The album's opening track, "Violet", was inspired by Love's relationship with Billy Corgan,[34] while songs like "Plump", "Miss World", and "I Think That I Would Die" contain the repeated themes of motherhood and post-partum depression.

[45]Fashion model Leilani Bishop is shown on the cover of the album, shot by photographer Ellen von Unwerth, dressed in beauty pageant attire with a tiara and a bouquet of flowers, with mascara running down her eyes in tears of joy.

[46] Love stated in an interview that she "wanted to capture the look on a woman's face as she's being crowned...  this sort of ecstatic, blue eyeliner running, kind of 'I am, I am—I won!

[48] The back cover of the album features a family photo of Courtney Love during her childhood in Springfield, Oregon,[49] with the individual track listings appearing to the right, printed on embossing tape.

[50] The album was dedicated to the memory of Joe Cole, a roadie for Black Flag and the Rollins Band who was shot to death in a December 1991 robbery after attending a Hole concert at the Whisky a Go Go.

[54] In June 1994, just before Hole was scheduled to embark on an international tour to support the album, bassist Pfaff was found dead in her Seattle apartment of a heroin overdose.

[58] Four singles were released from the album and three promotional videos were shot, for "Miss World" (still with Kristen Pfaff), "Doll Parts" (with L7's bassist Jennifer Finch replacing her) and "Violet" (already with Melissa Auf der Maur).

Following the album's release, rumors began circulating alleging that Love's recently deceased husband, Cobain, had ghostwritten some of the songs.

In a 2006 Time magazine piece, it was noted that "[the rumors] started immediately that it was Cobain, not his wife, Courtney Love, who wrote the majority of these churningly catchy songs.

Forget that there's no proof, that their marriage was collaborative and that it's a nasty thing to say, Live Through This is clearly a woman's work [and is] far more swaggering than any album any grunge man ever came up with.

"[59] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that the main reason Live Through This marked a drastic sonic departure from Pretty on the Inside (a reason cited in arguments that it had been ghostwritten) is "Love's desire to compete in the same commercial alternative rock arena as her husband... while [Cobain having ghostwritten] is unlikely, there's no denying that his patented stop-start dynamics, barre chords, and punk-pop melodies provide the blueprint for Live Through This.

"[3] Drummer Patty Schemel, a longtime friend of Cobain's, also denied this, commenting in 2011: "There is that myth that Kurt wrote a lot of our songs— it's not true.

[3] Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross conducted interviews with everyone associated with the making of the record, and found that all parties agreed that Love and Erlandson wrote the songs.

"[84] Musician Magazine wrote, "[Kurt] Cobain's much-discussed, little heard other half finally gets the chance to escape gossip-column purgatory and succeeds with flying colors... Courtney Love's foul, funny eloquence...cuts through all the bullshit with a mighty flourish.

"[85] This sentiment was reassessed in a 2008 BBC review of the album, which stated, "In 1994 and the years that followed, tragedy and controversy seemed to overshadow everything Courtney Love touched.

"[86] "Since the last Hole LP ... Courtney has learnt the art of writing a decent pop hook", observed Select's Clark Collis.

"[87] Spin reviewed Live Through This very favorably with a 9/10 rating, noting, "Love rode her band's gargantuan riffs through a shy loner's air-guitar fantasy: rock stardom as revenge upon the entire human race.