As this event proves, what's clear in 2018 is that she did in fact get the prize, and has simultaneously become the reference point for women in rock, paving the way for those after her.
Next Melissa read a love letter she’d written to Courtney telling her that she altered her life forever, but that it’s the female fans whose worlds she transformed most, and on the grandest scale.
“The lives you really changed were those in the front row, at home in their bedrooms, holding onto every word and every scream, [the people at] rock festivals around the world, the ones you pulled up on stage to play your guitar. You were singing for them, you made a safe place for them to be angry, to be beautiful, to be heard and to be understood.”
In the present day, Melissa noted, pop culture is much more welcoming of Courtney whereas in the '90s she was widely reviled. Now, in feminism and in rock, she, as a character, voice and a thinker, fits perfectly.