Twenty years ago today Nirvana released what would be their most beloved live album, and their first, the quintessential MTV Unplugged in New York.

Recorded a year previously (11/18/93), at the height of their fame, instead of knocking out a Nivana's greatest hits setlist like so many bands before them had done, the Seattle grunge legends dedicated half of their set to covers.

While their record label, Geffen, probably wasn't pleased with that punk rock move, it went went to sell over eight million albums and earned Nirvana their only Grammy.

Nearly everything from the audio and video recording has become iconic, in part, due to the nature of the release. Frontman Kurt Cobain, tragically shot himself in April 1994 and when the album was released seven months later there was still a fervor for as much material from the trio as fans could get.

So they eagerly scooped up what many call the greatest Unplugged session and the music video station aired songs in heavy rotation.

Cobain's acoustic/electric 1959 Martin D-18E was sold in a controversial auction for $6 million in 2020. The guitarist reportedly paid $5,000 for the vintage guitar in 1992, which was not regarded as a particularly good or sought-after instrument because it was Martin's first foray into an acoustic/electric guitar and critics claimed they had failed.

Ironically, when the band wrapped up the show with the tremendous cover of Led Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," Cobain said that he had asked his label's billionaire owner David Geffen (whom he had made even wealthier with Nevermind) if he could buy him one of Led Belly's guitars that was being sold for $500k, Geffen said no.

Even the set had a unique vibe to it, unlike many of the other groups that performed for MTV and it's acoustic format.

Cobain himself requested that the stage give off the appearance of a funeral with stargazer lilies, black candles, dark lighting, and a chandelier.

Another detail that probably infuriated the label was the band did not put many of its singles in the setlist.

Many bands and labels looked at MTV's Unplugged as a marketing device to sell artists' previous works by reminding fans through the stripped-down production. Eric Clapton, R.E.M., and even KISS got a profitable boost in their catalogue sales after performing on the show.

Nirvana, ever the Gen X punk rockers, had no interest in having more people buy previously released copies of their albums, or even their current one they were touring with, In Utero, because of a gimmick like an unplugged taping.

Cobain while leading into "Dumb" called it like it was: a TV show that can be edited.

If anyone was going to get an unexpected pop in sales, Cobain, Dave Grohl on drums, Krist Novoselic on bass, and Pat Smear on guitars, wanted it to go to their friends The Meat Puppets.

By covering not one, two, but three Meat Puppets songs, Nirvana gifted Curt Kirkwood an enormous amount of publishing royalties from the album as more than 20 percent of the tunes were his.

The other smaller group who benefited were The Vaselines when the group covered "Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam."

Nirvana covered two songs by the Scottish band on Incesticide in 1992: "Son of a Gun" and "Molly's Lips." And then did it again at the New York studios the following year. They also covered them during a session with John Peel.

"They recorded our songs and that gave us some income to keep doing our music over the last 20 years," Vaselines frontman Eugene Kelly said in 2014. "We always embrace it and we always say thanks to them when we can. Otherwise we would have just been another band who put out a couple of singles and disappeared and nobody would have heard of us."

Another person who had a direct positive impact from Nirvana's covers that night was The Thin White Duke, David Bowie, who never met Cobain but said he would have loved to have either worked with him or even just chatted, but it never happened.

“It’s ironic. Some people came up to me and said, ‘Hey, why are you doing a Nirvana song?’" Bowie told his audience in 1999 at the Kit Kat Club in NYC. "They did it really, really well, though.”

So what ever happened to Cobain's olive green cardigan sweater that he wore that night?

It was gifted to he and wife Courtney Love's nanny, Jackie Farry, soon after his death.

“There were a lot of people coming in and out of the house to show support and pay their respect to Courtney,” Farry told Rolling Stone. “She was giving a lot of people that knew him things he owned; valuable things like sweaters. I remember she kept going into the bedroom closet and coming out with more. It was around then that she gave me that cardigan.”

For decades Farry made sure never to wash the vintage 1960s Perry Ellis design that Cobain had gotten at a thrift store and wore regularly.

Five years ago it was sold for $334,000.

According to CNN, it was the most money anyone has ever paid for a sweater at an auction.