MTV Unplugged in New York

The band rehearsed for two days at the SST Rehearsal Facility in Weehawken, New Jersey. The producer Alex Coletti recalled that MTV was unhappy about the lack of hits and the choice of the Meat Puppets, and the day before filming Cobain refused to play.

The show was taped at Sony Studios in Manhattan on 18 November 1993, all 14 songs in a single take. They were one song from Bleach, four from Nevermind, three from In Utero and six covers. Cobain suggested decorating the stage with stargazer lilies, black candles and a crystal chandelier. Coletti asked if he meant a funeral, and Cobain said he did. Despite the acoustic premise Cobain insisted on running his guitar through an amplifier and effects pedals, so Coletti built a fake box in front of the amplifier to look like a monitor wedge. Cris and Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets joined for Plateau, Oh Me and Lake of Fire. The set ended with Where Did You Sleep Last Night, modeled on a 1944 Lead Belly recording, and Cobain refused an encore because he felt he could not top it. MTV broadcast the show on 16 December 1993 at 45 minutes, without Something in the Way and Oh Me. Both were restored on the 2007 DVD.

Plans for a live album called Verse Chorus Verse were dropped in August 1994, and DGC released the Unplugged performance on 1 November 1994 with Scott Litt producing the sound. It entered at number one on the Billboard 200 with 310,500 copies sold, the biggest first week of the band's career, and by March 1995 it had outsold In Utero. It is certified eight times platinum and won a Grammy Award at the 1996 ceremony, Nirvana's only one.

Q's Tom Hibbert heard a ragged glory, and Rolling Stone's Barbara O'Dair called it stirring and occasionally brilliant. Robert Christgau wrote that the vocal performance Cobain gave evoked John Lennon's on Plastic Ono Band, and that he did it in one take. The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll voted it fourth-best album of 1994, and in 2011 NME named it the greatest live album. In 2020 the 1959 Martin D-18E guitar Cobain played at the taping sold at auction for US$6 million, the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction at that time.