10 Greatest Final Albums In Rock

When you’re talking about real final albums, it almost feels unfair to include any live performances. These were supposed to be moments between band and audience, and if you’re not playing that much new material, what makes playing them live so special? The live stage is always made for magic moments though, and Nirvana’s unplugged performance might be the closest we can get to Kurt Cobain actually signing off.

Going back to the band’s third album In Utero, Kurt was already not in a good headspace, and this record is where you get to see the songwriter behind all of that screaming. While it was probably a wise move not to cover a song like Smells Like Teen Spirit acoustically, you get here the more intimate side of Nirvana’s catalog with Kurt’s more broken twist on it, like the raw beauty of a song like Dumb and stripping everyone else away for his solo performance of Pennyroyal Tea.

What stands out more than anything is when Kurt isn’t singing his own stuff though, bringing an added sense of melancholy to David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World and closing the entire show with a now iconic performance of Ledbelly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night, where you can still see Kurt’s soul coming right through his eyes as he sings. Even though this wasn’t meant to be the final thing Nirvana recorded, there’s a reason why MTV played this nonstop once we heard of Kurt’s passing. Given all of the bright lilies and intimate feel of the gig, it’s like watching Kurt give a performance at his own funeral.