Live Through This was praised unanimously by music critics and rock periodicals.
Rolling Stone said, "Love delivers punk not only as insinuating as Nirvana's but as corrosive as the
Sex Pistols'. More significantly,
Live Through This may be the most potent blast of female insurgency ever committed to tape", while
Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+ rating, saying, "What
Live Through This makes perfectly clear, though, is that Love is a greater star. She has charisma and attitude to burn, and she knows it. "
NME called the album "a personal but secretive thrash-pop opera of urban nihilism and passionate dumbthinks", and
Melody Maker called it "the high watermark of the genre that survived the crass label of `
foxcore'..."
Musician Magazine said, "[Kurt] Cobain's much-discussed, little heard other half finally gets the chance to escape gossip-column purgatory and succceeds with flying colors... Courtney Love's foul, funny eloquence...cuts through all the bullshit with a mighty flourish."
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. Thankfully, with every year that passes, it becomes easier to put the record’s
emotional baggage to one side and appraise it on the strength of its songs."
Spin perhaps gave the album its greatest praise, awarding it a 10/10 rating and naming it the #1 album of the year on their "20 Best Albums of 1994" list, 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."The album's prolificness has been recognized in more recent years as well— it was ranked number 466 on
Rolling Stone magazine's list of
the 500 greatest albums of all time, and was included in
TIME magazine's All-TIME 100 Albums list, as well as the book
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Source: wikipedia.com