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By Josh Gross

I recently watched the HBO documentary on Kurt Cobain, Montage of Heck. It’s a well-made film, offering a noisy, impressionistic window into the head of a complicated artist. But one of the things it points out is how important Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged album was, as it showed their songs had reach beyond just being loud and angry, two traits which can always find an audience, even when the songs containing them are really really bad.

But that also reminded me what a great show “Unplugged” was, back when MTV did music. So I rounded up some great performances from the show, along with a couple other acoustic versions that reframed the classics for a mixtape. There’s everything from Nirvana and Foreigner, to Scorpions and Jay Z.

Spotify playlist: http://spoti.fi/1G0hNPl

This article appears in May 20-27, 2015.

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Friday Mixtape: Unplugged Songs

by Hayley Jo Murphy, The Source - Bend, Oregon
May 29, 2015

<h1>Friday Mixtape: Unplugged Songs</h1> <p class="byline">by Hayley Jo Murphy, The Source - Bend, Oregon <br />May 29, 2015</p> <p>By&nbsp;Josh Gross</p> <p> I recently watched the HBO documentary on Kurt Cobain, <i>Montage of Heck.</i> It's a well-made film, offering a noisy, impressionistic window into the head of a complicated artist. But one of the things it points out is how important Nirvana's <i>MTV Unplugged</i> album was, as it showed their songs had reach beyond just being loud and angry, two traits which can always find an audience, even when the songs containing them are really really bad. </p> <p> But that also reminded me what a great show "Unplugged" was, back when MTV did music. So I rounded up some great performances from the show, along with a couple other acoustic versions that reframed the classics for a mixtape. There's everything from Nirvana and Foreigner, to Scorpions and Jay Z.</p> <p>Spotify playlist:&nbsp;http://spoti.fi/1G0hNPl</p></p> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com/news/friday-mixtape-unplugged-songs-2449193/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com&quot;&gt;The Source - Bend, Oregon&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.bendsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/cropped-Untitled-design-4.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=31295&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://www.bendsource.com/news/friday-mixtape-unplugged-songs-2449193/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/bendsource.com/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

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