“I Think That You’re Wrong”: Kurt Cobain’s Surprising Reaction Following Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged Session

When Nirvana played an MTV Unplugged session in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, on November 18, 1993, everyone in attendance knew they were witnessing something incredible, historical, and almost otherworldly in feeling. Kurt Cobain walked away feeling like everyone hated it.

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This propensity for self-deprecation was part of Cobain’s introverted, angsty demeanor on and off-stage. Even still, the fact that the Nirvana frontman would walk away from his lily- and candle-laden stage thinking that he didn’t just blow everyone’s minds is pretty incredible.

Given the fact that he died by suicide only five months later, his reaction was even more heartbreaking in hindsight.

Kurt Cobain’s Reaction To Nirvana’s MTV ‘Unplugged’ Session

Inviting Nirvana to do an Unplugged session was already a risky move on MTV’s part. One of the most integral parts of the band’s grunge sound was Kurt Cobain’s heavily distorted guitar and Dave Grohl’s powerful drums. Without these elements, would Nirvana even sound the same? Neither the production crew nor the band nor the audience anxiously awaiting the performance could answer that question definitively. They just had to wait.

Unsurprisingly, Nirvana proved that not only could they perform a definitive performance without guitar pedals and massive kick drums. But it almost sounded better. The live album from Nirvana’s MTV session is still a beloved addition to the grunge pioneers’ musical legacy. Yet, as MTV vice president of music and talent Amy Finnerty recalled, Cobain left the stage in a “weird mood.”

“I asked him what’s up,” she said in MTV Vault footage. “He was like, ‘I think it was bad. I think that the show was really bad. I don’t think I was very good.’ And I said, ‘I think that you’re wrong. I think that it was stunning.’”

Finnerty said Cobain brought up the lack of crowd response, as most of the attendees sat in marveling silence in between songs. She assured him that it was only because his presence and performance were both so stunning. Finnerty later said, “The silence in the room in between songs…was a show of respect towards the band to be so quiet. And that’s what Kurt misinterpreted: that the silence was disapproval. It was just respect.”

A Macabre Performance Preceding An International Tragedy

Death always tends to bring about morbid speculation, and Kurt Cobain’s tragic suicide in the spring of 1994 was certainly no exception. The rock ‘n’ roll icon took his own life only five months after he performed what would become one of the most iconic installments of the MTV Unplugged series. Given Cobain’s attitude before, during, and after the performance, some onlookers believed the singer might have been preparing his final goodbyes ahead of time.

The fact that Cobain requested lilies and black candles on the stage so that it would look “like a funeral” only added fuel to the flames of this macabre fan theory. Of course, no one can definitively say what was going through Cobain’s mind when he was performing in the quiet New York City studio. What is far less debatable, however, is that his death caused public anticipation for what would become the band’s final album to balloon into an epic fervor.

As Amy Finnerty told a despondent Kurt Cobain while walking him up to his hotel room after the performance, “People just saw their version of God playing 3 feet in front of them.”

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