This week I’ve spent my evenings in an epic “purge my apartment” mode. I’m uncluttering and sorting and cleaning and getting rid of old shit and finding space for new shit, and it’s sort of exhausting—mentally and physically.

But it needs to be done.

And because I refuse to turn my music collection digital, I have far too many CDs and absolutely no more space to store the in, so I’m forced to get rid of the junk. This has caused me to re-listen to a lot of the albums that got forgotten over the years, shoved to the back of the closet or hidden in the bottom of the stacks (I’m not OCD enough to alphabetize anything).

Some have had staying power and sound as good today as they did when I was a freshmen in high school. I’ll keep those ones. But some are… well, they’re bad and I can’t believe I didn’t sell them years ago (or even bought them in the first place, for that matter).

But you know what record I haven’t listened to in years that sounds fucking great? Great to the point where I like it even more now than I did over a decade ago?

Have you listened to it lately? You probably have. You win.

But man, it’s so good! And here’s why: I no longer give a fuck about that whole shitstorm that clouded the record’s release. When Live Through This was first release, everyone wondered who really wrote it. Everyone wondered if Courtney killed Kurt and if she did, funny it should happen right at the time of the initial release date for Live Through This. Everyone wondered if Courtney cheated on Kurt with Billy Corgan, and that caused everyone to wonder if Billy wrote the record. There was a lot of wondering going on. The only thing anyone could agree on was that Courtney Love did not write this record herself, but it was a good fucking record.

And now, it still is a great fucking record, and that’s the only thing that exists. Whether Courtney or Billy or Kurt or whoever penned the songs is no longer important. We’ll never know who wrote the songs. Whether Courtney had any involvement in Kurt’s death doesn’t matter. We’ll never know if Courtney really killed Kurt/had Kurt killed (despite Richard Lee’s undying attention to the case). Whether Courney cheated on Kurt with Billy Corgan doesn’t matter either. Knowing isn’t going to make the songs better or worse at this point, it won’t change anything, it’s no longer important.

The acceptance of that fact is what makes the record sound so good today. Because I have been able to let go of the debates that were on fire in 1995, I’ve finally been able to appreciate Live Through This. Before, even though I liked the album, the controversy of who wrote it, Kurt’s death, Courtney’s relationship with Billy, the grunge backlash as a whole, tainted it for me.

Today, though, in 2007, Kurt’s been dead a long time, Courtney’s a fuck up, but it’s accepted that she’s a fuck-up, and Billy’s a parody of himself. Everyone who could’ve possibly written the record in 1994 no longer exists.

Live Through This is the only thing that has survived.