Nirvana – The Man Who Sold The World (MTV Unplugged)

He Wanted The Set To Look Like A Funeral, Then Died Five Months Later

Nirvana’s cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” was recorded on November 18, 1993, during their legendary MTV Unplugged taping at Sony Music Studios in New York City. The album MTV Unplugged in New York was released on November 1, 1994—seven months after Kurt Cobain’s death—and immediately debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 310,500 copies sold, the highest first-week sales of Nirvana’s career. The song peaked at number three on MTV’s most played videos in February 1995 and spent two weeks at number seven on Canada’s MuchMusic Countdown. By March 1995, the album had outsold In Utero with 6.8 million copies sold. What nobody could have predicted was that Cobain’s haunting cover of David Bowie’s cryptic 1970 original would become what one critic called his “ghost song”—the performance that defined him posthumously.

The MTV Unplugged album earned five-times platinum certification in the US and topped charts in Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, where it sold 163,000 copies in its first week. MTV Unplugged in New York won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 1996. Rolling Stone named it the 95th best album of the 1990s, and in 2012, Rolling Stone readers voted it the eighth-best live album ever. NME named it the greatest live album in 2011, and Kerrang listed it among the 11 best live albums of all time. The video received heavy rotation on MTV and MTV Europe, with the acoustic performance of “The Man Who Sold the World” becoming one of the most iconic moments from the entire Unplugged series. The cover version received such considerable airplay on alternative rock radio that Douglas Wolk of Pitchfork later argued the song “didn’t really become a standard” until Nirvana covered it.

David Bowie wrote and recorded the original in May 1970 for his third studio album, also titled The Man Who Sold the World. The song was based around a circular guitar riff from Mick Ronson, with Bowie’s heavily phased vocals creating a haunting atmosphere. Produced by Tony Visconti at Trident and Advision Studios in London, Bowie wrote the lyrics in the studio reception area while Visconti waited at the mixing console. The song went relatively unnoticed upon its November 1970 US release. Lulu scored a top ten UK hit with it in 1974, but it remained obscure until Nirvana introduced it to a new generation. Bowie later said of Nirvana’s version: “I was simply blown away when I found that Kurt Cobain liked my work, and have always wanted to talk to him about his reasons for covering ‘The Man Who Sold the World'” and that “it was a good straight forward rendition and sounded somehow very honest.”

The performance was produced by Scott Litt, who had worked on R.E.M.’s most successful albums. Cobain ran his acoustic guitar through a fuzz box triggered by a pedal, allowing it to sound electric while maintaining MTV Unplugged’s acoustic aesthetic. MTV producer Alex Coletti built a construction to hide Cobain’s amp and effect pedals, preserving the show’s traditional atmosphere. The taping was tense—Cobain was suffering from drug withdrawal and nervousness. One observer noted, “There was no joking, no smiles, no fun coming from him…everyone was more than a little worried about his performance.” Before the taping, Cobain told MTV’s Amy Finnerty, “I’m scared. Can you make sure that all the people who love me are sitting in the front?” He’d also specifically requested that the stage be decorated with stargazer lilies, black candles, and a chandelier. When producer Coletti asked, “You mean like a funeral?” Cobain said yes.

The MTV Unplugged broadcast aired in December 1993, just one month after taping. It ran 45 minutes and omitted “Something in the Way” and “Oh Me.” After Cobain’s death on April 8, 1994, MTV aired the episode repeatedly to meet overwhelming demand. DGC Records initially announced a double album called Verse Chorus Verse featuring live performances from throughout Nirvana’s career plus the entire Unplugged set. But bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl found the task of compiling it too emotionally difficult, so they cancelled the project a week after announcing it. They opted instead to release just the Unplugged performance. The full DVD release came in November 2007, featuring the entire taping in 5.1 DTS surround sound, including the two songs excluded from the broadcast and five full-band rehearsal songs, one of which was “The Man Who Sold the World.”

The song’s cultural reach extends beyond music. In 2020, surviving Nirvana members Novoselic and Grohl reunited with Beck on vocals to perform it at a charity event. An electric guitar version appeared on Nirvana’s Live and Loud video album in 2013. The 2007 Los Angeles Times wrote that the Unplugged performance “deserves a place on the rock TV history shelf alongside the informal, sit-down section of Elvis Presley’s epic comeback special in 1968.” Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: “No other band could have offered covers of David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and the folk standard ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ on the same record, turning in chilling performances of both—performances that reveal as much as their original songs.”

For a song originally recorded 23 years earlier by a British glam rocker experimenting with heavy metal, Nirvana’s cover achieved something remarkable—it gave Bowie’s cryptic meditation on identity and insanity new life as a Generation X eulogy. The performance that Cobain feared would fail became the one that defined his legacy. MTV’s Finnerty told him after the show, “People just saw their version of God playing three feet in front of them.” The somber silence between songs wasn’t indifference—it was reverence. Cobain never got to see the album debut at number one or win a Grammy. He never knew that millions would consider his acoustic cover superior to Bowie’s original. But he did know, in that moment at Sony Studios surrounded by stargazer lilies and black candles, that he’d created something that would outlast him. The man who sold the world was gone five months later, but the song—his ghost song—plays on forever.