My Body, the Hand Grenade is a compilation album by Hole that includes b-sides, demo recordings, live songs, and other rarities and unreleased tracks by the band. Most of the songwriting credits go to Hole, although the BMI website shows that most of the songs were written just by Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson, except "Retard Girl", written by Love; "Old Age", written by Kurt Cobain (Krist Novoselic confirmed that "Old Age" was indeed "a Nirvana song" in an interview with UK music newspaper Melody Maker in 1997), "Beautiful Son" and "20 Years In The Dakota", written by Love, Eric Erlandson and Patty Schemel; and "Drown Soda", the only case on the album of a song credited to a full Hole line-up (Love, Erlandson, Jill Emery and Caroline Rue). Kurt Cobain (uncredited) plays bass on "Miss World". The liner notes explain that the compilation was pieced together to show Hole's progression from the punkier Pretty on the Inside (1991) to their grungier Live Through This (1994).