Marshall Hatfield

Going through the MTV Unplugged catalog to pick one song from each artist is hard because most of these sets are that good. I had to watch Nirvana’s Unplugged a couple of times. From start to finish, that performance is a clear example of why the whole concept worked. Take a band out of the big rooms, put them in a smaller space, strip away the wall of distortion, and see if they can still hold a room. I could’ve picked almost any song from that set. Nirvana didn’t write “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” Nobody really knows who did. The song has been around since at least the 1870’s coming out of the Southern Appalachians. It’s been a folk song, a blues song, a country song. Lead Belly recorded it in the 1940’s and made it more widely known. You can hear Johnny Cash singing it in your head but he never did. Right before they started it, Kurt was sitting there talking with the band and the crowd about how to end the set, casually lighting a lung dart. Someone in the audience called out for more. He looked up and said, “Fuck you all. This is the last song of the evening.” Then he delivered it in a way that made the room go still.