![]() ![]() It’s an artist battling a shredded throat, the crushing weight of industry expectations and her own fragility. ![]() “A lesser artist would’ve been shot and thrown out the window.” But 16 years later, things feel a little different, especially since there was no follow-up of any sort. “A lesser artist, it would’ve never been released,” an industry insider said. ![]() “I saw it with a roomful of professionals, and someone said, ‘I feel like jumpin’ out a window.'” But with her label desperate for new Lauryn Hill music of any sort, they released it as a double album. “Anyone with ears can hear there are only three chords being played on every song,” an anonymous industry executive told Rolling Stone in 2003. She had a ton of new songs, but was just learning to play guitar and clearly was in no position to be presenting them to the public. It had been three long years since Lauryn Hill released her debut LP The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill when she stepped onto the MTV Unplugged stage. Also, even Bruce Springsteen’s most die-hard fans probably feel that Plugged wasn’t exactly his finest moment. Before commenters go insane, we are excluding performances by the groups like the Eagles and Page & Plant that merely used the Unplugged name, or variations of it, for their concert specials. The new edition of the show kicked off September 2017 with Shawn Mendes to celebrate, here’s a chronological look at the 15 best Unplugged episodes of years past. It gave a new lease on life to veteran artists like Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart and offered newer groups like Pearl Jam and Nirvana a chance to strip their music back down to its essence and offer their fans some fun surprises. For those not around in the Nineties, that’s the show where big musical acts played acoustic renditions of their songs. It also means they’re bringing back Unplugged. ![]() 4.MTV’s latest reinvention scheme involved getting back to their roots, which means recreating their iconic Times Square studio for a revival of Total Request Live. Such stratospheric sales caused many ageing rockers, from Bob Dylan to Rod Stewart, to book their own slot on the show ASAP, with inevitably variable results. Released simply as Unplugged, the LP went on to win six Grammys – and sell 26 million copies. Then, 1970s air guitar anthem Layla found a second life as a lounge staple thanks to this solid reworking, devoid of all earlier pyrotechnics. Love 'em or hate 'em, Eric Clapton's latter-day career has largely been defined by two timeless nuggets that came from the electric guitar legend's restrained unplugged appearance.įirst, the heartfelt version of Tears in Heaven everyone knows – the song he wrote about his 4-year-old son falling to his death from a balcony – was birthed from this session. However, it will receive a vinyl issue on Friday, November 29, to mark Record Store Day Black Friday. But clocking at just 36 minutes and clearly shown up by their grunge rivals, the performance remained unreleased for years, despite being a fan favourite. The result of which is thrilling, especially when lead singer Eddie Vedder clambered on to his stool and scrawled "Pro Choice " on his arm in marker pen. Unprepared and fresh off the plane from Europe, Pearl Jam basically rented some acoustic guitars and played their high intensity electric set – at that point, basically classic debut album, Ten. Taped a year before Nirvana's episode, Pearl Jam's performance is instructive because it shows just how much more holistically Cobain and co approached the party. And thankfully, the purist former Beatle was the ideal artist to set the template so many others would come to follow – turning to a strict acoustic palette and side-lining his most familiar repertoire in favour of beloved covers and overlooked misses, just as Cobain would do so searingly two years later. Paul McCartney's entry gets included for one simple reason – it was the first in the then-two-year-old series to be released on CD, as Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). To celebrate the anniversary, here are eight of the most memorable performances for MTV Unplugged, most of which spawned stand-alone albums that would go down as classics in their own right. The lo-fi aesthetic pervades today in the content-hungry streaming age, replicated by everything from the intimate Spotify Sessions to the secret Sofar Sounds and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. Amid grunge’s overdriven scream and hip-hop’s block-rocking beats, something about stripping things back to basics clearly chimed with the times. Nirvana's performance for MTV Unplugged was the series' most iconic entry – the cigarette-holed cardigan Cobain wore that night sold last month for $334,000 (Dh1.2 million) at an auction, reportedly unwashed since.īut it was far from the only career-defining performance embracing the unplugged format. ![]()
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