TV Unplugged in New York is the first live album by the American rock band Nirvana, released by DGC Records on November 1, 1994, nearly seven months following the suicide of Kurt Cobain. It was part of the cable television series MTV Unplugged and features a mostly acoustic performance. It was recorded at Sony Music Studios in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, on November 18, 1993.
In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), journalist Charles M. Young called it Nirvana’s “second masterpiece” after Nevermind, and claimed that Cobain could have “revolutionized folk music the same way he had rock” because of his striking voice; he said his songs worked equally well with “a loud band bashing away behind you” or “with just an acoustic guitar”. Maeve McDermott of USA Today called it “an album of transcendent folk rock that glimpsed what could’ve been the band’s next post-grunge era, had frontman Kurt Cobain survived long enough to see its musical leanings through.
A 2013 article by critic Andrew Wallace Chamings in The Atlantic described it as one of the greatest live performances of all time:
For the final line, “I would shiver the whole night through,” Cobain jumps up an octave, forcing him to strain so far he screams and cracks. He hits the word “shiver” so hard that the band stops, as if a fight broke out at a sitcom wedding. Next he howls the word “whole” and then does something very strange in the brief silence that follows, something that’s hard to describe: he opens his piercingly blue eyes so suddenly it feels like someone or something else is looking out under the bleached lank fringe, with a strange clarity.
The Servants will be paying tribute once more in 2024 at the showcase in Machelen on the 1st of November. This performance is already sold-out… A new chance for Unplugged enthousiasts will be the 8th of March… more updates about that show soon.
