MTV Unplugged in New York - Album Release

Album Release

After Cobain was found dead in April 1994, MTV aired the Nirvana episode of MTV Unplugged repeatedly. In order to fulfill demand for new Nirvana material and to counter bootlegging, DGC announced in August 1994 that it would be releasing a double album titled Verse Chorus Verse, which was to include live performances from 1989 to 1994, as well as the entire MTV Unplugged performance. However, the task of compiling the album was too emotionally difficult for the surviving band members, so the project was cancelled a week after the official announcement. Instead, Novoselic and Grohl opted to commercially release just the Unplugged performance. Scott Litt, who had produced the performance, returned to produce the record.

MTV Unplugged in New York was released on November 1, 1994. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, selling 310,500 copies in its first week, giving the band its strongest first week sales. Ben Thompson of Mojo wrote, "The problem with Unplugged albums tends to be that, given that their original identity is as a video, you feel that you are not having the whole experience without something to watch. In Nirvana's case, that is actually an advantage, because this particular whole experience is too intense to have over and over again. Even the colourless, generic aspect of the Unplugged format is vaguely reassuring here." Entertainment Weekly gave the album an A rating. Reviewer David Browne noted that listening to the music in light of Cobain's death was "unsettling"; Browne added, "Beyond inducing a sense of loss for Cobain himself, Unplugged elicits a feeling of musical loss, too: The delicacy and intimacy of these acoustic rearrangements hint at where Nirvana (or at least Cobain, who was said to be frustrated with the limitations of the band) could have gone." Robert Christgau also gave the album an A rating, describing Cobain's performance as evoking as John Lennon's on his album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. By early 1995, MTV Unplugged in New York had surpassed Nirvana's final studio album In Utero (1993) in sales with 6.8 million copies sold. Rolling Stone ranked MTV Unplugged in New York at #311 in its list, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

"About a Girl" was released as the album's only commercial single in October 1994, backed with the Unplugged version of "Something in the Way" as the B-side. It was released on CD only in Australia and Europe. Promo singles were released for "The Man Who Sold the World", "Polly", "Lake of Fire", and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". Of the songs on the album, "About a Girl" became the biggest hit, becoming Nirvana's fourth number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and was also a top ten hit in Australia, Denmark and Finland.