it. Reception Brian Kay of Classic Rock History called their performance of the song "haunting" and "mesmerising". He writes, "Cobain's haunting vocals overtook and descended the Bowie lyric into an arena of darkness and hallucination that seemed to be Bowie's original intent. [The presence of the Meat Puppets' Cris and Curt Kirkwood], along with Cobain's lyrical phrasing and gritty yet humbling resonance, left the audience spellbound." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, in his review of MTV Unplugged in New York, wrote: "No other band could have offered covers of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" and the folk standard "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on the same record, turning in chilling performances of both – performances that reveal as much as their original songs." Bowie said of Nirvana's cover: "I was simply blown away when I found that Kurt Cobain liked my work, and have always wanted to talk to him about his reasons for covering 'The Man Who Sold the World and that "it was a good straight forward rendition and sounded somehow very honest. It would have been nice to have worked with him, but just talking with him would have been real cool." Bowie called Nirvana's cover "heartfelt", noting that "until this [cover], it hadn't occurred to me that I was part of America's musical landscape. I always felt my weight in Europe, but not [in the US]." In the wake of its release, Bowie bemoaned the fact that when he performed the number himself, he would encounter "kids that come up afterwards and say, 'It's cool you're doing a Nirvana song.' And I think, 'Fuck you, you little tosser! Rolling Stone added: "If the mark of a good cover is that people do not even realise it's a cover, Nirvana certainly did a good job" and that "The song also took on new meaning after Cobain died. This was a man with the world at his finger tips, and he gave it all up". The magazine ranked Nirvana's version number one in a reader's poll of the greatest live cover songs. Legacy and other versions At a pre–Grammy Awards party on 14 February 2016, surviving Nirvana band members Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Pat Smear teamed up with contemporary Beck to perform "The Man Who Sold the World" in tribute to Bowie–who had died the month before—with Beck performing vocals. To mark what