Songoftheday 8/6/19 - I need an easy friend I do with an ear to lend. I don't think you fit this shoe I do won't you have a clue...
from the albums Bleach (1989) and MTV Unplugged In New York (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #22 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 11
Today's song of the day comes from the altermative rock band Nirvana, who helped to change the course of rock music on the radio in the beginning of 1992 with the top ten pop hit (and crib of Boston's "More Than A Feeling") "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Also coming from their #1 album Nevermind was the top-40 single "Come As You Are", which would be their last physical single to make the top-40. The band's sophomore album, In Utero, came in the fall of 1993, and from it the song "All Apologies" had enough mainstream pop airplay to rise to #45 on the Hot 100 Airplay component of the official American pop chart, but on the week it did, Cobain took his life with a gun at his home in Seattle.
While drummer Dave Grohl went on to start up his own band Foo Fighters, and bassist Krist Novoselic turned to politics, the legacy of the band carried on first in the form of the release of a record/video of their appearance on MTV Unplugged from November of 1993 that was released a year later. Besides an acoustic performance of the aforementioned "All Apologies", another song from the show, a stripped down version of their early track "About A Girl", was promoted to radio. Written by Cobain, whose fascination with old pop music drove the song, "About A Girl" was a retro-style love song much like the lot out of the British Invasion of the 60s that originally appeared on their 1989 record Bleach...
While "About A Girl" was unable to place on Billboard magazine's official pop Hot 100 chart of the biggest hits in America, since it wasn't released as a physical commercial single here, it nonetheless garnered enough pop airplay to reach the top-40 airplay component chart in November of 1994. The song (mostly in the live rendition) topped Billboard's Alternative/Modern Rock radio chart for a week, while taking three weeks at #3 on their Mainstream Rock format list. Internationally, the song reached the top ten in Iceland (#3), Poland (#3), Australia (#4), Finland (#8), and Canada (#10), while making the top-40 in Belgium (#13), Italy (#20), Sweden (#20), the Netherlands (#22), France (#23), Denmark (#30). In 1996, the Live MTV Unplugged album won the band their sole award at the Grammys, for Best Alternative Rock Performance.
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Here's the original version of "About A Girl" from Nirvana's Bleach album...
And next up, the band live in concert in 1991...
As well as a year later in the UK...
And finally, from their Live and Loud concert on MTV...
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