The Weekend Stream Extra: A Guide to ‘MTV Unplugged’ on Paramount+ (Part 5)
Welcome to a special Sunday feature of The Weekend Stream, which takes a look at one of MTV’s great live music programs thanks to a recent reissue of one of its best-known episodes. We’re running a five-part deep-dive on every episode of MTV Unplugged that’s currently streaming on the station’s parent streaming network Paramount+! (Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 can be read here, here, here and here.)
The turn-of-the-millennium shot in the arm afforded to MTV by a big-budget teen-pop explosion and the channel’s eventual 20th anniversary in 2001 – growth not immediately deterred by the explosion of digital music consumption – was unfortunately not conducive to the network’s renewed interest in Unplugged. From this point forward and ever since, it’s been trotted out as an occasional brand to capture the increasingly fragmented interests of a viewership whose memories of 24-hour blocks of music videos gets increasingly hazy. But there are still some latter day episodes you can stream on Paramount+, along with listening to as audio elsewhere.
Shakira (rec. at Manhattan Center Studios, New York, NY – 8/12/1999; aired ca. 2/29/2000) labeled under Season 10
A groundswell of crossover Latin pop acts like Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias would start bubbling on U.S. radio around 1999; at virtually the same time, Colombian artist Shakira became the first to record an Unplugged episode entirely in Spanish. She’d made waves in Central and South America with a quartet of increasingly ambitious albums through the ’90s, including the Western rock-infused Pies Descalzos (1995) and Donde Están Los Ladrones (1998); the resultant episode was a stripped-down summary of her work thus far and a teaser for what she’d start releasing in English in the decade to follow.
Availability: The set was released as an album and video, scraping the bottom half of the Billboard 200 – her highest chart placement at the time.
Alanis Morissette (rec. at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY – 9/18/1999; aired 11/1/1999) labeled under Season 1
The MTV Unplugged engine was slowing down, but the quality was nowhere near flagging. Canadian singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette used her episode as the perfect capstone to several years of massive success spurred by the blockbuster Jagged Little Pill (1996). Here, backed by her touring band and string performances from first-call session players arranged and conducted by David Campbell, she offers new arrangements of hit fare, several songs that didn’t appear on any of her LPs and a cover of The Police’s “King of Pain.”
Availability: Alanis, too, got her own album out of the taping, with three more songs from the program on the CD single of “King of Pain.”
R.E.M. (rec. at MTV Studios, New York, NY – 5/21/2001; aired 8/22/2001) labeled under Season 10
The first act to headline Unplugged twice was R.E.M., returning a decade after they first appeared. By then, the bestselling alt-rockers had downsized to a trio with the retirement of drummer Bill Berry; Joey Waronker took his place while Scott McCaughey of The Minus 5, a longtime touring partner, also sat in on the taping. The set was heavy on tracks from that year’s Reveal as well as material since their first set; only five songs, including a repeat performance of the hit “Losing My Religion,” even came from albums before 1991.
Availability: Both Unplugged sets became one of the first archival projects after the group’s amicable dissolution in 2011. Unplugged: The Complete 1991 & 2001 Sessions was released in 2014, first on vinyl for Record Store Day, then on CD.
Staind (rec. at MTV Studios, New York, NY – 7/16/2001; aired 10/21/2001) labeled under Season 10
Oddly, less of the 2000s mainstream rock bands than you’d think made appearances on Unplugged. Staind frontman Aaron Lewis had a recurrent video on the channel performing the then-unreleased “Outside” acoustically with Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst on the Family Values tour of 1999, so the band’s appearance – which reprised that song as well as fan favorite “It’s Been Awhile” – was not without precedent.
Availability: This is one of a very few episodes released only on video (VHS and DVD), although the set’s version of “Can’t Believe” appeared on the European CD single for their 2003 release “Price to Play.”
Dashboard Confessional (rec. at MTV Studios, New York, NY – 4/24/2002; aired 6/28/2002) labeled under Season 11
Once a place for classic artists to earn new, younger audiences, Dashboard Confessional’s Unplugged episode did something that few did, actually giving the cult-favorite band their most mainstream exposure. Emotional singer/songwriter Chris Carrabba and his group hadn’t yet cracked the upper half of the Billboard 200, but performances of “Hands Down” and “Screaming Infidelities” made them increasingly ubiquitous to lovelorn teens, and their next album, 2003’s A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar (featuring a new, full-band version of “Hands Down”) debuted at No. 2 on the charts.
Availability: Dashboard’s appearance was one of several branded under the MTV Unplugged v2.0 banner, the name of the resultant CD/DVD that chugged along to platinum status.
Alicia Keys (rec. at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY – 7/14/2005; aired 9/23/2005) labeled under Season 1
With two critically and commercially successful albums under her belt – 2001’s Songs in A Minor and 2003’s The Diary of Alicia Keys – the New York-born singer/songwriter/pianist made her Unplugged set a party, sprinkling in a new single (Diary outtake “Unbreakable”), covers of “Every Little Bit Hurts,” “If I Was Your Woman” and a duet of The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” with Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine; and a set-closing version of Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley’s “Welcome to Jamrock,” with guest appearances from Common and Yasiin Bey (then known as Mos Def).
Availability: The resultant album – available as a standard CD and a limited CD/DVD with two bonus tracks – became the biggest debut for an Unplugged project since Nirvana, and the first time a female artist debuted atop the Billboard 200 with music from an episode.
Korn (rec. at MTV Studios, New York, NY – 12/9/2006; aired ca. 3/2/2007) labeled under Season 13
By this point, Korn had been on the scene for more than a decade with a clanging mix of alternative metal that formed one of the main bulwarks against ’90s pop on MTV. By the time they recorded an Unplugged episode, much had changed: the band was only a trio (guitarist Brian “Head” Welch took a hiatus from 2005 to 2013, and drummer David Silveria exited a year after Welch did, leaving only frontman Jonathan Davis, guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer and bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu), and the set was first aired online instead of on MTV proper. But Korn brought everything to the performance: dark arrangements that added strings, taiko drums and even a musical saw; a sharp cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” and guest appearances by Evanescence singer Amy Lee (“Freak on a Leash”) and even a mash-up of “Make Me Bad” and The Cure’s “In Between Days” featuring Robert Smith and his band.
Availability: The resultant album became their eighth Top 10 disc; several digital bonus tracks floated around afterward, including a version of “Dirty” that appeared on Japanese pressings.
Shawn Mendes (rec. at The Theatre at Ace Hotel, Los Angeles, CA – 9/8/2017; aired 9/8/2017) labeled under Season 1
By this point, MTV Unplugged was a sparingly-used brand that made more waves outside the U.S., as was the case within months of Mendes’ performance, when a-ha’s acoustic set in Europe became a big hit overseas. Mendes, the emotive crooner of pop/rock confections like “Stitches,” “Mercy” and “There’s Nothing Holding Me Back,” is even allowed to pick up an electric guitar on several tracks for some reason. Unplugged‘s remaining echoes of artistic viability is probably what made this set happen.
Availability: That viability is furthermore probably why the set, also featuring a cover of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody,” got its own modestly-charting album.
A Hip Hop 50th Celebration of Jersey’s Finest: Heather B., Lady Luck, Lords of the Underground, Poor Righteous Teachers, Queen Latifah, Redman, The Sugarhill Gang, Treach, Wyclef Jean (rec. at Newark Symphony Hall, Newark, NJ – 11/15/2023; aired 12/15/2023) labeled under Season 17
MTV briefly revived Unplugged in 2020 for a series of online performances during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (then marketed as Unplugged At Home). They’d mothball it shortly thereafter, bringing it back to America for special occasions including performances by BTS and one of Tony Bennett’s final appearances, duetting with Lady Gaga. One such unique set that got the Unplugged seal of approval was a cross-generational 2023 performance, highlighting the 50th anniversary of the creation of the hip-hop genre and focusing on its satellite appeal outside its New York City roots, showcasing how nearby New Jersey felt the impact of rap with an impressive line-up of acts who’d not graced an MTV airwave in decades, if not ever.
Availability: The multi-artist nature of this one probably excluded a release, which is a shame. After all, these are the kinds of artists who might inspire people to pick up a physical album.
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1 thought on “The Weekend Stream Extra: A Guide to ‘MTV Unplugged’ on Paramount+ (Part 5)”
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Meh… reduced to a whimper, not a bang.
Looking forward to watching some classic aunplugged episodes on Paramount for as long as it lasts. Some I’m interested in but never seen.
Disappointing how many artists who never did Inplugged should’ve. Grateful Dead and Billy Joel immediately come to mind for me. Plenty of others too.
Stumbled across REM’s 2001 set years ago on MTV Classic. It was OK, but nothing like their incredible 1991 show.