I thought you died alone, a long long time ago...
Probably the best known of all Bowie covers is Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged version of The Man Who Sold The World. Released on the band's MTV Unplugged In New York album the following year, a promo single of the track enjoyed massive airplay around the world.
Despite the airplay it was never released as a single (aside from the promo CD and an Italian promo 45) though it was also included on Nirvana, the band's best of compilation album.
Kurt Cobain spoke of "the debt we all owe David" during the MTV taping and the band continued to perform the song live until Cobain's death in 1994.
David has long acknowledged that there is a generation of fans who seem to consider the song a Nirvana original, commenting with much humour, more than once, that after his own live performances of the song "kids would come up afterwards and say, 'It's cool you're doing a Nirvana song.' And I'd think, 'Fuck you, you little tosser!'".
SPIN magazine has now voted this version #1 in its poll of The 50 Best Cover Songs, commenting thus: Kurt Cobain's pained vocals on Nirvana's unplugged rendition of this cosmic 1970 Bowie tune sounded even more haunting after the song became a posthumous rock-radio staple.
You can see the full list of fifty songs