In 1990, blues rock virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan brought the sounds of Texas to the MTV stage, shredding on his 12-string guitar during an iconic set.

Though metal fans were happy to see their favorites onscreen, Rolling Stone dubbed KISS’s stint on the show as "one of the most pointless MTV Unplugged segments imaginable.”

An early guest on the MTV staple, Paul McCartney was the first artist to release an album of his Unplugged set.

“It was a fun, fun experience,” LL Cool J said of how he approached his now-legendary MTV gig. “I think there’s a certain amount of purity that went into that performance. It wasn’t contrived. It was just, no ego, just kinda doing music.”

“Programs like MTV Unplugged showcase talent like hers with an exclamation point,” St. Petersburg Times critic Sabrina Miller said of Mariah Carey’s performance.

“I think we’d rehearsed for two weeks beforehand and Liam only turned up once or twice,” Noel Gallagher recalled of his brother’s conspicuous absence from their MTV slot. “The day of the performance, he hadn’t turned up and there were rumours that he’d been out drinking for a couple of days… and nobody knew where he was. About an hour before we were due to go on, he turned up, absolutely s—d. We said, well look, let’s see if you can sing a couple of songs, and it was … dreadful.”

Tony Bennett’s recording of his MTV Unplugged performance swept the 1995 Grammy Awards, winning both Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance and Album of the Year.

During their 1991 stint on MTV Unplugged, The Cure debuted their single, “A Letter to Elise.” The song was released the following year with different lyrics.

“Shakira’s performance for MTV in 1999 constituted the first time a Latin pop act attempted an Unplugged, the first Latina solo act to do so, and the first time a Latino act didn’t tape their performance at MTV’s studios in Miami,” wrote music reporter Marcos Hassan of her appearance on the program in 2018. "It was also the first time Shakira experienced crossover success and paved the way for her eventual ascent to the pop stratosphere."

Rod Stewart’s 1993 MTV Unplugged performance “reminded many old-school Rod Stewart fans why they loved him in the first place and became his best-selling album in years,” as Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene put it in 2021.