Top 6 unforgettable Nirvana stage performances

Born in the busy town of Aberdeen, Washington, Nirvana left a mark on rock and pop music that will last forever. Set up in 1987 by Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, and joined later by strong drummer Dave Grohl, this band rose from the deep Seattle music scene just over a year later. They soared to global fame.

When their 1991 album, Nevermind, and its hit song Smells Like Teen Spirit shot up the charts, Nirvana didn't just rise to the top of the music world. They gave a voice to young folks who were close to finding something to cling to. This hunger was evident in their chaotic live shows, especially in Kurt Cobain’s unpredictable stage presence.

Whether it was in hot, loud club shows or big festivals, or in the close MTV Unplugged in New York show, where they took down their loud sound to show a soft beauty under all that noise, the shows were never just shows. They were a let-out and a sign of the deep feelings and the softness that Nirvana always had.

Decades after those gigs, the live legacy of Nirvana can be a reminder of what made their music so deeply resonant to this day: it was alive, rebellious, and uncensored. Their relatively brief stint in the spotlight has left a trail in terms of how raw emotion and bare authenticity can help to rattle stand-alone stadiums and small settings alike, as revealed in their live performance.

The live performance of Nirvana will always be used as a standard by bands that wish to demonstrate that being perfect is not the key to real power on stage, but complete honesty and connection with the audience.

Disclaimer: This article contains the writer's opinion. The reader's discretion is advised!

Here are the top 6 greatest live performances of Nirvana

These are the best 6 Nirvana live concerts. These are the most memorable moments in which the raw essence of the band and that tickling, inexplicable energy that made the live show very memorable could be felt.

Starting with the thrashing club shows of Seattle grunge's starting point through epic live festival appearances and the hauntingly alluring MTV Unplugged in New York, these performances also show the way that Nirvana elevated their performance without artifice. The concerts serve as stark reminders of why Nirvana is remembered so well in their live work, raw, uncut, and unforgettable.

1) Nirvana's live performance at the Paramount, Seattle, USA (1991)

Filmed during Halloween Night (1991) at the Paramount Theater, Live at the Paramount is an amazing portrayal of Nirvana at one of its turning points, towards the end of the year after Nevermind had landed in stores and before it decimated rock music in a night lampooning the same.

This is a performance that demonstrates a band casting off their skin of being underground and coming out into a place they never had envisioned, but continues with the rough and gritty edge that had initially attracted audiences to them.

The concert is a pulsating storm: driven by incessant drumming of Dave Grohl, anchored by the lumbering bass of Krist Novoselic, and punctuated by rough-but-burning vocals of Kurt Cobain, who cuts through the heavy music in the thick of a maelstrom.

Songs such as Breed and Blew rip to life with shredded-raw precision, the lighting and the grainy imagery take on a visceral-devilish aroma of a band in waiting to become a super-group, yet still left in the DIY grunge-cave. No fancy stage shows or troop of dancers, just the direct power of three musicians capitalizing on the energy given by the audience and a momentum given by one another.

To most Nirvana fans, it has been one of the purest indicators of how Nirvana could engage alternating forces of power and tenderness to such an extent that they managed to capture a passing instant when their music remained as much the preserve of the underground as the global arena.

2) Heart Shaped Box at SNL, 1993

When they stepped in to host Saturday Night Live in 1993 to play Heart Shaped Box, it was a great and brilliant moment to capture how Nirvana was in the last rocky period of their life. Heart Shaped Box, which was plucked off the In Utero, their third and final studio album, sounded nothing like the slick hooks that had made Nevermind a worldwide sensation.

Recorded by Steve Albini, In Utero went a tad more rough-and-tumble, with Kurt Cobain believing that that more accurately captured what the band was all about. His performance of the song soaked in angst and defiance on that SNL stage, his voice cracking and soaring above the jagged tones of his guitar with the beat of the song pounding along by Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic as relentlessly as the percussion of the song, the lyrics to the song were cryptic and almost surreal.

Before the show, Nirvana had a big plan. They wanted to mix things up in pop culture. So, they got NBA star Charles Barkley to open for them. This was just right for a band that liked to poke fun at old ways and the posh scene they never matched with.

This was rough and a little bit addled as compared to many of the glossy television appearances, and Kurt Cobain pushed out the microphone into the faces with his penetrating gaze and untrained voice, erasing any pretense of a gap between the band and the millions of TV viewers at home.

To their legions of fans, the version of the song was what Nirvana was then: rough and tough, yet still delicate, uncompromising, always and never to be commodified.

3) Territorial Pissings on the Jonathan Ross Show, 1991

As Nirvana came out on a TV show with Jonathan Ross in 1991, the band had an opportunity to convey the moment when its members were unwilling to act in accordance with all the rules.

Ross presented them with hopes that they would play their then-budding single Lithium but Krist Novoselic instead leaned into the microphone to yell out the primal intro to Territorial Pissings, an even more intense song off Nevermind.

Many years later, Dave Grohl, upon reappearing on a conversation show with Jonathan Ross to promote a Queens of the Stone Age performance, confirmed that the change was deliberate, another finger to the expectations.

The band ripped through the song with bloodthirsty abandon and pushed their respective instruments and even the studio sound system to its very limit, and closed out the brief set by destroying their equipment and saturating the stage with a wall of screeching feedback.

Ross, ever the wit, retorted to the camera, talking about how Nirvana were free to play at children's parties and bar mitzvahs, a quote which has never stopped being funny as to how absurd their insanity was in such a primetime lineup. Not only did this act of defiance on TV shock the viewers, but it also indicated how much Nirvana were willing to go to defend their rough edge, regardless of who was listening.

4) Le Zenith in Paris, France, 1994

Recorded at Le Zénith in Paris on February 14, 1994, this gig was one of Nirvana's most iconic. It was part of their last tour in Europe, just before they ended tragically. The setlist that night pulled tracks from their rough-around-the-edges Bleach album, their game-changing Nevermind, and their raw, harsh finale: In Utero.

The atmosphere at this Paris gig is the one that fans and bootleg collectors can often point out for its hotness and the uniquely rebellious yet tired spirit that Kurt Cobain carried in the air. The performance allowed Nirvana to show how it could manage collisions between noise and tune, going back and forth between the Red-hot punk frissons of a song like School, and the mournful soft-loud balances of a song like All Apologies.

A haunting highlight was when Kurt Cobain finished the set with a tremendous version of the folk song, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?. A song that he would memorably reprise weeks later, during their MTV Unplugged performance.

As those rough vocals of Kurt Cobain can be heard in the Paris venue, the performance now sounds like a terrifying vision of the last days of the frontman that makes his honesty and pain resonate as deeply today as it did decades ago.

5) MTV Unplugged in New York, USA (1993)

While the loud, flashy shows of Nirvana's early days set the scene for big, bold gigs, their MTV Unplugged in New York gig let fans see a new side of them, one that was not as known before.

Without the distortion pedals and the roaring amps, Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and such incestuous guests as the Meat Puppets' Curt and Cris Kirkwood created an ambience that was spookily nerve-baring and personal.

As opposed to just relying on their best-selling songs, the band performed a setlist that caught a lot of people by surprise with several lesser-known originals such as Dumb and Something in the Way and stark, emotional covers of Lead Belly's, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? and David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World. Many were excited by the highlight of the soul version of About a Girl which began the show on a vulnerable note that colored the rest of the set.

The album MTV Unplugged in New York, released on November 1, 1994, months after Kurt Cobain died, was a painful but effective reminder of how deeply he could make music.

Not only did the live album debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with more than 310,000 copies sold during the first week, but it ended up surpassing the sales of In Utero early in 1995, and it continued to rise to the Grammy Awards, which it won in the Best Alternative Music Album category.

It is one of the most important performances of the band today because, despite the cover of grunge chaos, there was an underlying layer of songs, and the frontman who could sing softly and tear the heart apart.

6) Lithium, MTV VMAs, 1992

When Nirvana hit the stage at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, they made what might have been a plain show into a bold show of guts. Though they were set to play Lithium, Kurt Cobain slyly began with some chords of Rape Me, not minding MTV's calls to drop the song.

Halfway through, Krist Novoselic threw his bass up high, but it hit him on the head as it fell. He rolled on the stage while Kurt broke his guitar on the amp, filling the place with loud noise. To make it even more wild, Dave Grohl got close to the mic to tease Axl Rose, keeping their big fight hot.

In most ways, when Nirvana was on stage, they caught all that made them stand out: deep feeling, wild power, and pure truth that brought folks in, no matter the place. From loud, big show spots to simple, soft sound sets, they showed that the real weight does not come from big stage shows but from a true link with the song and the ones hearing it.

Even now, seeing or hearing Nirvana live is like walking into a time that is full of life and not set, making us see why they still mean a lot in rock's tale.