It is well regarded that Kurt Cobain had many issues, not the least of which was fame and his unability to deal with it.Frankly, the guy couldn't get out of his own way. Unplugged was recorded six months before he killed himself and released another seven months afterwards.
It would go on to surpass In Utero as the top-selling album by Nirvana and the song "About a Girl" was released as the only single and, thusly, it became the album's only commercial hit. Of course, "About a Girl" was a giant "fuck you" to MTV and everyone else. It's a great song, but it's also off the band's first album, Bleach, which was wildly unpopular.
Unplugged performances were typically an opportunity for a huge band to play all their hits acoustically and sell shitloads of more albums. Nirvana didn't do that. But it didn't stop Nirvana's album was filled with rareties, B-sides, covers of the Vaselines, Meat Puppets and Leadbelly.
The album is eerie. Cobain is audibly and physically uneasy and nervous. Rumors are he was withdrawing from drugs. The album wasn't completely unplugged because Cobain demanded he have an amp as a sort of security blanket. He also demanded the set be arranged and decorated to look like a funeral -- as if he knew what was going to happen in April of the next year.
Cobain and Co. tried their damndest to be unpopular. But that effort made them increasingly more popular.
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