“Fame is a prison,” tweet­ed Lady Gaga, and many Twit­ter wars ensued. She was only echo­ing an old sen­ti­ment passed down through the enter­tain­ment ages, from Gre­ta Gar­bo (“I detest crowds”) to Don John­son. The emo­tion­al toll of celebri­ty is so well-known as to have become a stan­dard, almost cliché, theme in sto­ry­telling, and no recent artist has exem­pli­fied the tor­tured, reluc­tant celebri­ty more promi­nent­ly than Kurt Cobain.

Cobain may have want­ed to be famous when Nir­vana broke out of Wash­ing­ton State and signed with major label Gef­fen, but he did not want the kind of thing he got. At the end 1993, when the band record­ed their MTV Unplugged in New York spe­cial, he seemed pos­i­tive­ly suf­fo­cat­ed by star­dom. “We knew Cobain did­n’t seem all that hap­py being a rock star,” recalls music jour­nal­ist David Browne, who sat in the audi­ence for that leg­endary per­for­mance, “and that Nir­vana was essen­tial­ly acqui­esc­ing to indus­try dic­tates by tap­ing one of these shows.”

Cobain’s rare tal­ent was to take his bit­ter­ness, despair, and rage and turn them back into deft­ly arranged melod­ic songs, stripped down in “one of the great­est live albums ever,” writes Andrew Wal­lace Cham­ings at The Atlantic. “An unfor­get­table doc­u­ment of raw ten­sion and artis­tic genius. While inti­ma­cy was an intend­ed part of the [Unplugged] con­cept… parts of the Nir­vana set at Sony’s Hells Kitchen stu­dio feel so per­son­al it’s awk­ward.”

The per­for­mance reveals “a singer uncom­fort­able in his own skin, through addic­tion and depres­sion” and the con­tin­ued demands that he make nice for the crowds. The clipped inter­ac­tions between Cobain and his band­mates, espe­cial­ly Dave Grohl, have become as much a part of the Nir­vana Unplugged mythol­o­gy as that frumpy green thrift-store cardi­gan (which recent­ly sold at auc­tion for $137,500).

Kurt’s disheveled crank­i­ness may have been part of Nirvana’s act, but he also nev­er seemed more authen­ti­cal­ly him­self than in these per­for­mances, and it’s riv­et­ing, if painful, to see and hear. Five months lat­er, he was dead, and. Unplugged would become Nirvana’s first posthu­mous release in Novem­ber 1994. In the quar­ter cen­tu­ry since, “accounts have emerged,” writes Browne, that show exact­ly “what was tak­ing place in the days lead­ing up to that tap­ing.”

“The rehearsals were tense,” Browne con­tin­ues, “MTV brass weren’t thrilled when the promised guests turned out to be the Meat Pup­pets and not, say, any­one from Pearl Jam. Cobain was going through with­draw­al that morn­ing.” And yet every song came togeth­er in one take—only one of three Unplugged spe­cials in which that had ever hap­pened. “The entire per­for­mance made you feel as if Cobain would per­haps sur­vive…. The qui­et seemed to be his sal­va­tion, until it wasn’t.”

Mark­ing the album’s 25th anniver­sary this month, Gef­fen has rere­leased Unplugged in New York both dig­i­tal­ly and as a 2 LP set, announc­ing the event with more behind-the-scenes glimpses in the rehearsal footage here, pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able on DVD. At the top, see the band prac­tice “Pol­ly,” and see a frus­trat­ed Grohl, whom Cobain con­sid­ered leav­ing out of the show entire­ly, smoke and joke behind the scowl­ing singer.

Fur­ther up, see Cobain strain at the vocals in “Come as You Are,” while Grohl shows off his new­found restraint and the band makes the song sound as watery and wob­bly as it does ful­ly elec­tri­fied. Above, Cobain and gui­tarist Pat Smear work out their dynam­ic on Bowie’s “The Man Whole Sold the World,” while cel­list Lori Gold­ston helps them cre­ate “the pret­ti­est noise the band has ever made,” writes Cham­ings. Even 25 years on, “there is no way of lis­ten­ing to Unplugged in New York with­out invok­ing death; it’s in every note.” Some­how, this grim inten­si­ty made these per­for­mances the most vital of Nirvana’s career.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Video: Kurt Cobain on Teenage Angst, Sex­u­al­i­ty & Find­ing Sal­va­tion in Punk Music

How Kurt Cobain Con­front­ed Vio­lence Against Women in His “Dark­est Song”: Nevermind‘s “Pol­ly”

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (1991)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

‘We’re gonna do for TV what FM did for radio’–Mark Good­man, the first ever MTV VJ.

When I was grow­ing up, MTV was that rare com­mod­i­ty. Not all cable providers had it, and those that did charged an extra fee to get it. That meant there were cer­tain kids in school that we were friends with just because their par­ents had it. (Sor­ry Tom, no hard feel­ings!)

This exhaus­tive (and some­times exhaust­ing) YouTube playlist offers 710 videos that were sta­ples of the chan­nel in its 1980s hey­day, right through the ‘90s when it slow­ly mor­phed into a lifestyle chan­nel and VH‑1 and then M2 picked up the slack of end­less­ly rotat­ing mem­o­ries.

Music videos had been around long before MTV. From Sco­pi­tones to the Bea­t­les’ pro­mo films for “Pen­ny Lane” and such, visu­als and pop music were nat­ur­al allies. And through the ‘70s and ear­ly ‘80s, music pro­grams mixed live stu­dio per­for­mances with videos often. But not 24/7 often. And not, as the the first VJs pro­claimed on August 1, 1981, in *stereo*. This was a big deal for a lot of peo­ple.

After intro­duc­ing the crew one at a time–Mark Good­man, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, J.J. Jack­son, and Nina Black­wood, all soon to become house­hold names–the first video rolled: The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Ear­ly view­ers soon dis­cov­ered this how­ev­er: MTV didn’t real­ly have a lot of videos, and in that first year, cer­tain ones got played more than their pop­u­lar­i­ty deserved. (They seemed to play Saga’s “On the Loose” once every hour.) The oth­er thing view­ers noticed: there was a lot, a LOT of hard rock and Adult Ori­ent­ed Rock as they used to say in radio mar­ket­ing. After the new wave of the Bug­gles came Pat Benatar, Rod Stew­art, REO Speed­wag­on, Styx, .38 Spe­cial, April Wine, Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty. (To be fair, there was also The Cars, Split Enz (!), and The Pre­tenders.

And then there were the pre­dom­i­nant­ly white faces in all the videos. MTV was designed to appeal to rock fans and not, ahem, “urban lis­ten­ers”. Elec­tron­ic music, dance music, r’n’b, and oth­er gen­res were notice­ably absent. (It took pub­lic sham­ing by David Bowie and the unde­ni­able pop jug­ger­nauts of Michael Jack­son and Prince to change that.)

By 1982, the chan­nel had expand­ed for many rea­sons. One of them was the amount of bril­liant videos com­ing out of the UK, shot by direc­tors who seemed to real­ly get the poten­tial of the art form. Tim Pope, Rus­sell Mulc­ahy (who shot most of Duran Duran’s videos), and the duo of Annabel Jankel and Rocky Mor­ton brought in a knowl­edge of film his­to­ry, ani­ma­tion, and sur­re­al­ism to their videos, which com­ple­ment­ed the mix and match fash­ion of the New Roman­tics.

But on both sides of the Atlantic, artists were real­iz­ing the poten­tial of the visu­al ele­ment to their entire iden­ti­ties. Plus, there was mon­ey. Lots and lots of mon­ey. (Some of it even went to the musi­cians!)

As the ‘80s came to a close, MTV had changed music cul­ture for bet­ter and for worse. It had ded­i­cat­ed pro­grams to rap music, to alter­na­tive music, to heavy met­al, and turned Spring Break into a rite of pas­sage. And there were still some good years left in it.

Music videos are every­where on YouTube now, but atom­ized just like every­thing else. You forge your own path as you go down the rab­bit hole. They still have the pow­er to shock, like last year’s “This Is Amer­i­ca” by Child­ish Gam­bi­no, or unite the coun­try very briefly like “Old Town Road” by Lil NasX. But what is miss­ing, real­ly, is that rep­e­ti­tion. We all knew what Michael Jack­son looked like because “Bil­ly Jean” and “Thriller” were on our TVs all the time. Same with Madon­na. Now we know our stars from their social media, from their mag­a­zine spreads, from their live shows, and some­times, just some­times, from these lit­tle music films that used to be the cen­ter of the uni­verse.

Watch the com­plete playlist of 700 ear­ly MTV videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie Take MTV to Task for Fail­ing to Play Music Videos by Black Artists (1983)

Watch Queen’s Drag­tas­tic “I Want to Break Free” Video: It Was More Than Amer­i­ca & MTV Could Han­dle (1984)

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

David Fincher’s Five Finest Music Videos: From Madon­na to Aero­smith

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.