Who recorded it first

The Man Who Sold the World

Not a Nirvana original — a 1970 David Bowie song

This one splits by generation: to many younger listeners ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ is a Nirvana song, but Nirvana’s 1993 version is a cover. It was written and first recorded by David Bowie in 1970, as the title track of his Mercury Records album. Nirvana played it on MTV Unplugged two decades later and introduced it to an audience that had never heard the original.

The record

Who recorded it first

Original recording
David Bowie, 1970
Written by
David Bowie
First released
November 1970 (Mercury Records) — album title track, never a single
Made famous again by
Nirvana, 1993 (MTV Unplugged)

How we traced it

The song was written by David Bowie and first recorded by him in May 1970 for Mercury Records, as the title track of the album The Man Who Sold the World Wikipedia ↗.

Bowie never released it as a single, and within his own crowded catalogue it stayed a relative deep cut — better known for a time through Lulu’s 1974 hit version than through Bowie’s own.

Nirvana covered it on MTV Unplugged in New York, recorded 18 November 1993 and released in 1994; the stark acoustic reading reached millions who had never heard the 1970 original and quietly reassigned the song in many listeners’ minds MTV Unplugged ↗.

Wikipedia — the song’s history and Nirvana’s cover
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Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is a generational misattribution: nothing about Nirvana’s performance is wrong or fake. The only error is believing they originated the song — a 1993 cover mistaken for the source by listeners who met it there first.

The beliefcover, not original

‘It’s a Nirvana song’

Nirvana’s 1993 Unplugged version is a cover. David Bowie wrote the song and recorded it first, twenty-three years earlier, in 1970 the history ↗.

The originalwrote it and recorded it first

David Bowie, 1970

Bowie’s version was the album’s title track but never a single — a relative deep cut in a vast catalogue, which is exactly why a later cover could overshadow it so easily.

The route inthe version most people met first

Nirvana, 1993

For younger fans, MTV Unplugged was the first time they heard the song at all. When the cover is your introduction, it is hard to imagine it belonging to anyone else.

Written and first recorded by David Bowie in 1970, and made famous again — but not originated — by Nirvana in 1993 the record ↗.

Context

Why the cover ate the original

A cover eclipses its original most easily when the original never had a spotlight of its own. Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ was an album track, not a single, and it sat in the shadow of his bigger hits; there was no famous Bowie recording lodged in the public’s memory to defend the song’s origin.

The twist is generational. Nirvana’s 1993 Unplugged performance arrived for millions of younger listeners as a first encounter, not a reinterpretation — and Bowie himself noticed. He recounted young fans praising him for ‘doing a Nirvana song,’ a neat measure of how completely the cover had taken over the source.

The two records, in order
  • David Bowie writes ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and records it first (May 1970, Mercury).
  • It is released November 1970 as the album’s title track — never a single, and a relative deep cut.
  • Nirvana perform it on MTV Unplugged in New York, 18 November 1993.
  • The live album is released in 1994; the acoustic version becomes many listeners’ introduction to the song.
  • In the public memory of a younger generation, the song quietly becomes a Nirvana number.
When the cover is your introduction, it is hard to imagine the song belonging to anyone else.

The writer and original recording artist

David Bowie

1947–2016 · English singer and songwriter

David Bowie (1947–2016) both wrote ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and recorded it first, in 1970, as the title track of the album that shares its name. It was one of the quieter corners of an enormous catalogue — never a single, easy to overlook next to ‘Space Oddity’ or ‘Heroes’. Bowie later noted, with some amusement, that young fans would tell him ‘It’s cool you’re doing a Nirvana song’ — the clearest sign of how thoroughly the cover had eclipsed the source.

Popularly credited as the original

Nirvana

American rock band · formed 1987

Nirvana performed ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ on MTV Unplugged in New York in November 1993, and for a whole generation of listeners that haunting acoustic take simply became the song. Their version is genuinely theirs and genuinely great; the only error is chronological, the assumption that a song they made famous in 1993 must be one they wrote. It was Bowie’s, from 1970, more than twenty years before Kurt Cobain sang a note of it.