10 Greatest MTV Unplugged Episodes
Music At Its Most Bare.
It's amazing that something like MTV Unplugged managed to get on the air. Compared to the more lavish productions happening on MTV and beyond, there was no good reason to have these outlandish rock stars tone things down a bit. However, there seemed to be a little bit of magic coming from these more downtempo sections.
Despite not having their core live show at their disposal, the real professionals of the MTV generation turned in some of the greatest performances of their career by going unplugged, giving us a completely different take on their usual sound. Since this was never the usual concert setup, this let the audience hear a few more downtempo songs that would have gone unnoticed in their discography had they not given it a spotlight here. The best of these instances comes when they reinvent old classics, either by digging up a cover to perform acoustically or by just taking one of their usual uptempo material and making it much simpler for acoustics.
With no trickery to hide behind, everyone watching these episodes got to see these songs for what they were rather than the glitzy studio versions you'd hear time and time again. Even though there's only an acoustic foundation, this is the litmus test which separates the decent performers from the true artists.
10. Hole
Nothing that Hole has put out in the past decades has really screamed classic status for any reason. Hell, even when Courtney Love was firing on all cylinders in the Live Through This days, her aggressive approach to heavy rock was always an acquired taste at the best of times. She did have at least one ace up her sleeve for the Unplugged performance though.
Going into a Hole Unplugged session, we were already treated to some pretty unique renditions of their songs, including some strange takes of tunes like Softer, Softest and Miss World. Towards the midpoint of the set, things start to take a bit of a different turn though, with Love taking a cue from her husband in more ways than one. Long before it became the Nirvana classic we know today, this was the first mainstream debut of the song You Know You're Right, with Love behind the mic adding the same ferocious delivery Kurt Cobain had on the Nirvana version.
Considering how well her husband's own Unplugged performance went, this was almost like Love harnessed a little bit of that magic for the world to see one last time. While it might be known more for its place in history nowadays, this is still a fantastic piece of rock that deserves a second look these days.