Performer Notes

Nirvana: Kurt Cobain (vocals, acoustic guitar); Dave Grohl (vocals, bass, drums); Krist Novoselic (guitar, accordion, bass).
Additional personnel: Cris Kirkwood (acoustic guitar, bass); Pat Smear, Curt Kirkwood (acoustic guitar); Lori Goldston (cello).
Recorded live at Sony Music Studios, New York, New York on November 18, 1993.
UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK is part of MTV's "Unplugged" series.
UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK won a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance.
Sadly, MTV Unplugged stands as Nirvana's last album. While it's an album of covers and old songs, it ranks as one of the band's most cohesive records. Instead of relying on the trio's overpowering sonic force, Unplugged concentrates on Kurt Cobain's subtly shaded songwriting and Nirvana's deceptively simple musical power. Every version of their previously recorded songs, with the possible exception of "On a Plain," dramatically improves the original, and the covers reveal more about Cobain than he intended. By the time Nirvana close with a wrenching, spine-chilling version of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," the emotional complexity of Nirvana's music is clear. It's also clear that they could have made even greater music. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Professional Reviews

Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.56) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's."

Rolling Stone (10/1/94, pp.120-121) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...Nirvana's performance is stirring and occasionally brilliant, electricity be damned....Without the wild blasts ordinarily produced to fire Nirvana's sound, Cobain's love-buzz vocals are the focus..."

Spin (1/95, p.71) - Highly Recommended - "...UNPLUGGED captures the moment of Nirvana bathing in its own richly deserved light, and though the moment couldn't last, nothing in the music suggests that there was anything inevitable or natural about the next chapter of the story..."

Entertainment Weekly (11/4/94, pp.70-71) - "...Listening to MTV UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK is an unsettling experience....the band...concentrates on the numbed-out chamber-grunge numbers....delicacy and intimacy of these acoustic re-arrangements hint...where Nirvana...could have gone..." - Rating: A

Q (12/99, p.82) - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s."

Q (12/94, p.147) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...stripped of the noise...the band sounds most moving, possessed of a ragged glory. And...it becomes clearer than ever just how much Nirvana owed to less feted Americans such as The Sneakers, dBs and Mitch Easter's Let's Active..."

Alternative Press (1/95, pp.63-64) - "...UNPLUGGED is about as fine a memento mori as anyone could hope for..."

Melody Maker (10/29/94, p.35) - "...gut-twistingly poignant....a fine and unreservedly recommended album, a melancholy masterpiece..."

Village Voice (2/28/95) - Ranked #4 in the Village Voice's 1994 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.

Mojo (Publisher) (p.64) - Ranked #09 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Brittle and heartbruised, Nirvana's songs were stripped bare and scratched out on an acoustic guitar."

Mojo (Publisher) (1/95, p.51) - Included in Mojo's "25 Best Albums of 1994" - "...a performance of raw vulnerability that served as the perfect epitaph for poor Kurt Cobain."

New York Times (Publisher) (1/5/95, p.C15) - Included on Neil Strauss' list of the Top 10 Albums of '94 - "...These songs...[are] strings of epitaphs delivered in a blistering, electrifying unplugged show."

NME (Magazine) (8/12/00, p.29) - Ranked #27 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums".

NME (Magazine) (12/24/94, p.22) - Ranked #4 in NME's list of the `Top 50 Albums Of 1994.'

NME (Magazine) (10/29/94, p.45) - 9 - Excellent Plus - "...this album makes its makers sound legendary. Your hankies should be at the ready..."