No music video was made for "All Apologies", with Cobain explaining in a December 1993 MTV interview that he "hadn't bothered to come up with any ideas lately" because he had been "concentrating on touring.

In a 2005 interview with Wes Orshoski of Harp, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl recalled that the song was "something that Kurt wrote on [a] 4-track in our apartment in Olympia.

'"[6] As she recalled in a 2010 interview with Swan Fungus, "Most of the cello on that was me just messing around and then Kurt had me learn one specific line that he wanted everyone to be playing the same thing on.

"[7] In a 2023 interview with Rolling Stone, Schaley revealed that Albini was initially resistant to the idea of adding cello to "All Apologies."

As she explained to interviewer Brian Hiatt, "Steve kept trying to talk [Cobain] out of putting cello on it," but says that "Kurt and I won in the end."

"[9] In a 1993 Rolling Stone interview, Cobain told David Fricke that songs such as "All Apologies" and "Dumb" represented "the lighter, more dynamic" sound that he wished had been more prominent on previous Nirvana albums.

[10] The band eventually elected to remix "All Apologies", along with the album's lead single "Heart-Shaped Box", due to concerns that the vocals and bass were not loud enough in Albini's original mixes.

"[12]The two songs were remixed by Scott Litt, chosen due to his work with American rock band R.E.M., in May 1993 at Bad Animals in Seattle, Washington.

"All Apologies" was performed for the final time live at Nirvana's last concert, at Terminal Einz in Munich, Germany on March 1, 1994.

"I like to think the song is for them," he told Michael Azerrad in the 1993 biography Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, "but the words don't really fit in relation to us...the feeling does, but not the lyrics."

"[16] In a 2023 Rolling Stone interview, Azerrad speculated that the lyric "aqua seafoam shame" may have been "a reference to being in a hospital, with all those bland aqua-seafoam-colored walls and [Cobain is] feeling shamed because he’s there for his drug habit.”[17] "All Apologies" was released as a double A-side single with "Rape Me" on December 6, 1993, on CD, cassette tape, and 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl record formats.

"[26] In his review of In Utero for Rolling Stone, David Fricke called the song a "stunning trump card, the fluid twining of cello and guitar hinting at a little fireside R.E.M.

while the full-blaze pop glow of the chorus shows the debt of inspiration Cobain has always owed to Paul Westerberg and the vintage Replacements.

"[38] Both the studio and MTV Unplugged versions of "All Apologies" appeared in an episode of the American drama television show Six Feet Under in August 2005.

[42] "All Apologies" was covered by Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor as the seventh track on her album Universal Mother, released in September 1994.

A music video was made for O'Connor's version,[43] and it appeared in an episode of the American drama television show Big Little Lies in 2019.

[52] According to American comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, however, who opened for Nirvana at some shows during the In Utero tour, Cobain had shared his idea for an official "All Apologies" video that revolved around him being drunk at a party.

Goldthwait suggested that Cobain perform the song dressed as Lee Harvey Oswald, singing into the camera while putting his rifle together in the Texas School Book Depository from which he assassinated American president John F. Kennedy.

[54] It also aired on MTV Europe starting in February 1994 to promote the In Utero album and the studio version of the song which had been released as a single,[55] and was eventually placed into medium rotation in June 1995 as the third music video used to promote the MTV Unplugged in New York album,[56] following "About a Girl" in October 1994,[57] and "The Man Who Sold the World" in February 1995.

[62] According to a Cashbox article published the same month, the Unplugged version was "enjoying ultra-heavy rotation, stoking radio interest in the song".

In 2014, Kyle McGovern of Spin called the Unplugged version "the definitive rendition" of the song, writing that "its power lies in those chilling cello lines; the candle-lit intimacy that can be felt even without watching the iconic performance footage; and that final mantra, gently sung by Cobain and Dave Grohl: 'All in all is all we are,' an epitaph equal parts puzzling, comforting, and devastating.

"[65] In the magazine's 1995 review of MTV Unplugged in New York, Rob Sheffield wrote that the rendition "begins hesitantly, fingers tapping on strings in a brittle staccato, until Dave Grohl's elegantly brushed drums push Cobain into a terse valentine to a lover who has married him and buried him, a lover from whom he can't escape because after he'd tasted the joy of being easily amused, it hurts too much to go back to jaded detachment.