Robbed hit of the week 4/21/19 - Nirvana's "All Apologies"...
from the albums In Utero (1993) and MTV Unplugged (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: did not chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #45
This week's "robbed hit" is the first of my series to be a conundrum, since it wasn't released as a single in the U.S. at all. It comes from the grunge-rock band Nirvana, who had ushered in a new era for the genre with their #1 album Nevermind, which spun out a top ten pop hit with "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and a top-40 follow-up in "Come As You Are". In 1993, the band hired producer Steve Albini and recorded their third and what would be their final studio album In Utero. However a couple of the tracks had to be remixed, with R.E.M.'s sound guy Scott Litt coming in to help lead singer Kurt Cobain punch the sound up. The record was released in the fall of 1993, with the record company promoting the track "Heart Shaped Box" without releasing it as a single in America. The song missed even the pop airplay chart, being as left-field as it was, but it ended up topping Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart for three weeks, and crossing over to their Mainstream Rock list to peak at #4. (The song was put out physically overseas and reached the top ten in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Finland, and Portugal.) The second released from the record was also not put out as a single in the States. "All Apologies", written by Cobain and with "Heart Shaped Box" was one of the songs mixed by Litt, became the band's most "lighthearted" popular hit, supposedly inspired by wife Courtney Love and daughter Frances Bean...
While "All Apologies" was unable to reach the pop Hot 100 in Billboard, it climbed to #45 on the Hot 100 Airplay component chart in April of 1994, eventually spending 22 weeks on the list. But the week the song peaked on the airplay list, Cobain took his life in his Seattle home. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in France (#20), Ireland (#20), the UK (#32), and New Zealand (#32). In Canada, it peaked at #41 right under that level.
At the Grammy Awards in 1994, a month before Cobain's death, In Utero was nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance, which they lost to U2 for Zooropa. The following year, "All Apologies" gained noms for Best Rock Song (which went to Springsteen's "Street Of Philadelphia"), as well as Best Rock Duo/Group Vocal, which Aerosmith took for "Crazy".
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There never was a studio "music video" for "All Apologies", and MTV simply used the footage from their Unplugged show for the clip on air, causing this version to surpass the studio cut on the radio...
Here's the group performing the song, which was originally written in 1990, in 1992 in Reading...
And a rare clip from the tour in 1993 in Miami...
Finally, when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Lorde joined Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic to perform "All Apologies"..
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