the core of that song until you've heard Love's embittered delivery of the last two lines — "It's life's illusions I recall / I really don't know life at all" — over guitarist Eric Erlandson's fading squall." In 1995, Alternative Press magazine ranked the album at No. 74 in their "Top 99 Of '85–'95" list, noting that "Love works in extremes and wears that scarlet letter when she feels like it, and when she doesn't she rips it off, never neglecting melody and language as the real medium for her message." Wendy Brandes of CNN, while reviewing Hole's third release, Celebrity Skin, in 1998, described Pretty on the Inside as "the musical equivalent of scrubbing one's eardrums with sandpaper". Retrospective Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave the album a notably positive review in 2002's AllMusic Guide to Rock, calling the album "uncompromising," and further noting: "The jagged white noise and buzzing guitars articulate Courtney Love's pent-up rage as well as her lyrics, and while that might make the album difficult to absorb in one sitting, it also makes it a singular achievement." Music historian Andrew Earles referred to the album as "brick-heavy...a crushing mix of Mudhoney at its finest, sludge-metal, Sonic Youth, and Love's terrifying but also moving vocal performance." PopMatters reviewed the album in 2009, noting that it has "bold musical splendour on display" that "[leaves one feeling] nothing short of gobsmacked". In a 2015 retrospective assessment, Spin noted the album's overt noise rock influences, writing that it "played like AmRep release". Legacy Pretty on the Inside has had an influence on multiple alternative rock acts, being specifically mentioned by Spinnerette/The Distillers frontwoman Brody Dalle in an interview as a seminal album in the development of her music. British rock band Nine Black Alps also noted the album as a major influence on their third release, Locked Out from the Inside (2009), and indie singer-songwriter Scout Niblett cited it as a major influence on her: "For me, the thing that I loved about them and her [Courtney Love] was the anger, and aggressiveness, along with the tender side", said Niblett. "That was something I hadn't seen before in a woman playing music. That was hugely influential and really inspiring. Women up 'til then were kind of one-dimensional, twee, sweet, ethereal, and that annoys the shit out of me." Contemporarily, the album has also gained a cult following among rock