Courtney Love

To her credit, Courtney Love's band Hole was well on its way to making its own mark on the grunge scene when her superstar husband's death made her a household name. In the years since Kurt Cobain's passing, Love has become a difficult figure to pin down. As many love her as hate her, and even as she begins to win over the public with one of her many projects, some sort of bad publicity never fails to rise up and fan the flames ignited by her detractors. Looking past the media blitz that is her life, Live Through This, the record she made as a member of Hole, stands as one of the best grunge albums of its time. It's powered by Love's knack for sketching the misery suffered by damaged, "outsider"-type women and her ability to inform yells and screams with harrowing amounts of genuine rage. Her solo debut, America's Sweetheart, came out in early 2004.