{"id":230600,"date":"2025-07-02T00:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230600\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:07:12","slug":"the-one-soundgarden-song-chris-cornell-refused-to-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230600\/","title":{"rendered":"The one Soundgarden song Chris Cornell refused to sing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chris<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Press)<\/p>\n

Tue 1 July 2025 21:14, UK <\/p>\n

It\u2019s nearly impossible to compare any lead vocalist\u2019s best song to what Chris Cornell<\/a> could do. Compared to every other band in Seattle, what Cornell could do with his voice wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t the right instrument for the job.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t bring anything to it. Nirvana was one of the foundational artists of his generation, but what could Cornell have possibly added to \u2018Smells Like Teen Spirit\u2019 that would have enhanced the song in any way?<\/p>\n

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 \u2018Black Hole Sun\u2019, it\u2019s insane to believe that they snuck in so many complex musical fragments into the mix. <\/p>\n

Even by their standards, though, \u2018Half\u2019 was a bit of an oddball choice. They always had a sense of humour about their music, judging by songs like \u2018Big Dumb Sex\u2019<\/a>, 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\u2019t do a bad job, but when Cornell heard the song, he knew that he couldn\u2019t improve on what the bassist had already played.<\/p>\n

Any A&R man would have been furious that Cornell was taking a back seat, but the frontman wouldn\u2019t have had it any other way, saying<\/a>, \u201cI 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\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2018Circle of Power\u2019, and while that tune is really funny, it\u2019s the last thing people should go to when looking at the band\u2019s best material. When in Shepherd\u2019s hands, though, \u2018Half\u2019 turned into something a bit otherworldly.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s mid-period records. And judging by how serious songs like \u2018The Day I Tried to Live\u2019 could be, getting someone else behind the microphone at least helped add a little bit of levity to the rest of the record.<\/p>\n

Although Superunknown remains one of the most perplexingly strange albums to ever make it into the charts in the 1990s, the fact that \u2018Half\u2019 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. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Music Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest music news from the independant voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Press) Tue 1 July 2025 21:14, UK It\u2019s nearly impossible to compare any lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[57213,77,269,37845,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-230600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-chris-cornell","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-soundgarden","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114780730035247657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}