(Credits: Far Out / Press)
Tue 1 July 2025 21:14, UK
It’s nearly impossible to compare any lead vocalist’s best song to what Chris Cornell could do. Compared to every other band in Seattle, what Cornell could do with his voice wasn’t even close to fair, especially when he reached into the stratosphere and pulled out notes that most people would need some sort of helium or physical pain to reach. But Cornell was also a musical thinker, and he would never throw his voice on something when it wasn’t the right instrument for the job.
From the beginning of Soundgarden, Cornell always looked at himself as a songwriter first and a musician second, so there was no point in him making a tune his own if he couldn’t bring anything to it. Nirvana was one of the foundational artists of his generation, but what could Cornell have possibly added to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ that would have enhanced the song in any way?
He knew better than to throw himself on top of everything, and by Superunknown, everyone in the band was more open to talking about their own ideas. There was a lot more wiggle room for them to work in strange time signatures, and given how it became one of their biggest albums with hits like ‘Black Hole Sun’, it’s insane to believe that they snuck in so many complex musical fragments into the mix.
Even by their standards, though, ‘Half’ was a bit of an oddball choice. They always had a sense of humour about their music, judging by songs like ‘Big Dumb Sex’, but for anyone expecting to hear Cornell screaming nonsense lyrics, you might want to go elsewhere, considering the entire song is being sung by Ben Shepherd. He doesn’t do a bad job, but when Cornell heard the song, he knew that he couldn’t improve on what the bassist had already played.
Any A&R man would have been furious that Cornell was taking a back seat, but the frontman wouldn’t have had it any other way, saying, “I remember getting into a discussion with Ben where I had to convince him to sing it. He had done the demo, and it was amazing. We all loved it, but I didn’t feel like I was going to capture what he was trying to do with it. The lyrics come from the perspective of a child, and he had the mood that was incredible.”
But a lot of people had reason to be cautious here. The last time someone took the mic away from Cornell was when original bassist Hiro Yammamoto took over for the song ‘Circle of Power’, and while that tune is really funny, it’s the last thing people should go to when looking at the band’s best material. When in Shepherd’s hands, though, ‘Half’ turned into something a bit otherworldly.
The production itself was already a bit psychedelic, but with the looping guitar picking going on underneath everything, it almost feels like one of the interludes that you would hear Jimmy Page pull out on one of Zeppelin’s mid-period records. And judging by how serious songs like ‘The Day I Tried to Live’ could be, getting someone else behind the microphone at least helped add a little bit of levity to the rest of the record.
Although Superunknown remains one of the most perplexingly strange albums to ever make it into the charts in the 1990s, the fact that ‘Half’ exists is a testament to the kind of band Soundgarden always was. No, not everything they did was radio-friendly, but they would much rather go down with the ship than have to worry about what song should be pushed out as a single.
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