Tash Sultana – "It's Fully Plugged in!”

Tash Sultana is an artist playing by their own rules. A new Unplugged album features plenty of acoustic guitars - but also a Strat, a Tele and a Whammy pedal

- By Jenna Scaramanga

When Kurt Cobain turned up for Nirvana's MTV Unplugged special in 1993, he had a Fender Twin and a Boss DS-2 distortion W in tow. Purists were not impressed, but it's now the most lauded performance from Unplugged's original run. In 2021, Tash Sultana showed an even more flagrant disregard for the rules, appearing with such notably not-unplugged devices as a Stratocaster, a Telecaster, and a Whammy pedal. "I had people kicking off about the fact that I was gonna do it very much plugged in," Tash recalls. "I just thought, 'Nah, f*ck 'em.' I didn't think about it being unplugged. I just thought this is a television broadcast and I'm gonna bring it."

While it's too early to say how history will remember Tash's MTV Unplugged: Live in Melbourne, the early response has been hugely positive. The TV broadcast has been shown in 150 countries, the furthest reach of any Australian MTV concert to date, and when the album version was released in June, it racked up 2.5 million streams in 24 hours. "I'm really glad that I stuck to my guns," Tash smiles. "I just knew I had crafted something that was worth the time."