I’m doing some work off-site today and they had the Bryan Adams MTV Unplugged album playing and I was thinking about my favourite unplugged albums of all time. Here’s my top 3 -

1. Eric Clapton – Unplugged
   
   This was one of the first CD’s that I ever bought and I remember spending hours and hours with it playing as background music. Clapton’s re-working of several great songs and some new tracks as well. Everyone is pretty familiar with the brilliant version of “Layla” as well as “Tears From Heaven” which became a hit single and helped this album win SIX Grammy Awards, including Record, Album and Song of the Year. It still gets very regular rotation both at my home and office.
2. Nirvana – MTV Unplugged In New York
   
   The most intriguing thing about this album is that it was released after Kurt Cobain’s death in April 1994. It won a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 1996 and was a commercial success. The contrast of this performance with the band’s reputation is what did it for me. Nirvana was generally known as heroes of the grunge movement – slackers, uncaring about appearances, rebellious attitudes, etc – but the presentation factor of this performance is incredible. The slacker attitude of the band in the midst of this beautiful stage and lighting design is really shown in their performance of “All Apologies” – check the video here. Of course having Dave Grohl playing drums adds to the “cool factor” of this album, too!
3. Bryan Adams – MTV Unplugged
   
   Ignore the fact that this guy is Canadian and just appreciate that this album is killer. He took a bunch of his rockin’, electric-driven songs and turned them in to a beautiful collection of songs presented in a unique, artistic way. The re-work of “Cuts Like A Knife” and “18 Till I Die” are my favourites on this album. To me this is the truest unplugged album of the three because of the way that the songs are arranged with a variety of acoustic instruments which wouldn’t normally be thought of in listening to the original versions of these songs. There is some really beautiful music on this album and you definitely owe it to yourself to check it out if you haven’t heard it.