Superunknown, Alive in the
Revisiting the album 30 years later
At Soundgarden’s appearance at Lollapalooza in 1992, Chris Cornell introduces their performance of "Outshined" by inviting the audience over for Thanksgiving, citing long European tours as the cause of homesickness for "Seattle faces". Grunge is intrinsic to Seattle; the city of Seattle found its fame through grunge. Some gripe Nirvana’s inclusion as a Seattle band despite their formation in Aberdeen, Washington; others find Eddie Vedder’s iconic status in the world of grunge more ironic given his obvious San Diegoan nature. Soundgarden, at that Lollapalooza performance, identified their sense of belonging to a scene that, then, felt like the world itself. Over 14,000 people were in attendance that night at Lollapalooza, a sea of people bobbing and thrashing about to their music. (I would say “in time” to their music but rock audiences are typically white.) The Seattle scene lauded them, but, despite its grandiosity, it soon buckled under the popularity of post-punk, pop rock, and emo.
It’s a great shame that if I walked down the street doing the kind of vox pop that’s popular on TikTok, I’d guess that less than 10% of people asked would have heard of Soundgarden. In the wake of Pitchfork’s closure that’s the future of music journalism; the only job prospects I have now lie in assaulting randomers with questions about grunge, shot in vertical video format. Yet, decades on, me and the 40-something Pilsner-drinking dads can each count ourselves one of Soundgarden’s 7,401,110 monthly Spotify listeners. There’s something about Soundgarden that still captures people, that still works for us in 2024. For me, Soundgarden’s style is a respite from the often overproduced music that currently populates the industry. Decades later, their velvety riffs and vocals still resonate with me. In honour of its 30th anniversary this month, I’m revisiting Soundgarden’s fourth studio album Superunknown.
Let Me Drown
Breaking the record open with a loaded riff that furrows through your veins, “Let Me Drown” sustains Soundgarden’s status as the cool older brother of the 90s Seattle grunge scene. It gives us both sides of Chris’ vocals - both the searing screams and the gorgeous harmonies. This song is a great opener because it's a microcosm of the album itself. It plays with those loud/soft dynamics that are intrinsic to the music of the scene, and that Soundgarden in particular handles so well, and lyrically balances the themes hope and dejection that are braided through the album.
My Wave
“Don’t come over here / Piss on my gate / Save it, just keep it / Off my wave”. God, Kim Thayil’s riff here just captures me. That riff feels like damage, like scratching an itch to its bleeding point. The song then shifts into a loose, surfer-vibe chorus. It’s a great composition, utilising contrast in a Black Sabbath, AC/DC-y manner but also bearing a Beatles influence. Soundgarden’s Beatles’ influence is loud and proud on this album, notably on Ben Shepherd’s composition “Half”. I say all of this to rationalise my view that this song is what I might play to an alien sent to earth to discover who this late-eighties/early-nineties Seattle rock band were.
Fell On Black Days
If I look back through my Spotify ‘Liked Songs’, “Fell on Black Days” is the first time Soundgarden makes an appearance. It’s crazy to me that this used to be pop music. At one point in the mid-90s, this song was played out of every car radio - Soundgarden, once was inescapable.
As much as it’s weird to be a fan of a band so long after their heyday, something about their relative obscurity in today’s times draws me in even more.
Mailman
“Mailman” delivers a deep, dirty guitar sound that slaps you out of the gloom-filled stupor of the previous track. The song chronicles a mailman who ‘goes postal’ and kills his boss, according to a comment Cornell made at a concert in 1994.
Cornell’s falsetto notes here take my breath away. Since vocal ability is not a priority of the genre, Cornell’s genuinely great vocals elevate the band’s sound. What makes Chris Cornell the best vocalist of the grunge era is that he never sacrifices power in an effort to utilise his full range. In Corbin Reiff’s book, Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell, he gives us a perspective of Cornell’s singing from Andrew Scheps, Audioslave’s sound engineer on their 2002 self-titled album. Incredibly, Cornell recorded the screeching, almost raspy vocals on “Cochise” while sat down. “It was astonishing because the thing about Chris is that it sounds like he’s yelling at the top of his lungs all the time, but he’s actually a quiet singer,” Reiff quotes from Scheps. Cornell has approximately the same vocal range - maybe even wider, depending on sources - as Freddie Mercury (four octaves). This makes it even more unbelievable that Cornell's music has enjoyed less recognition in today’s times than his peers.
Superunknown
There are some rock songs that instantly make me feel like I’m in a music video and this (and Stone Temple Pilots’ “Heaven and Hot Rods”) is one of them. Both songs transport me to the other-worldly glam rock video in the Shake Your Whammy Fanny bit of the Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode that stars Raquel Welch, feather boas and all.
“Superunknown”’s place as the title track pins its message of accepting life’s uncertainties with enthusiasm as the personal philosophy of what is otherwise quite a dark album. This album includes some songs that are downright painful to listen to after Cornell’s death and is also named after the most motivational track on the list. If the title track was “Black Hole Sun” (entirely possible given its commerciality), or “4th of July”, or especially “Like Suicide”, the whole vibe of the album would be way too on the nose.
Naming the album after this song is such a Soundgarden move: they were constantly contradicting themselves, taking the piss out of hair metal but going on tour with Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row in 1991-2. They were on both sides of the Nirvana v. Pearl Jam rivalry, as vocal admirers of the former and close comrades of the other. Soundgarden, as exemplified by “Superunknown” (both the song and the album), thrived in the no man’s land between extremes of all kinds - influences, tastes, and comrades.
Head Down
With “Head Down” we move from the power and tempo of “Superunknown” to something slower but more epic. I hear Soundgarden’s music in films and video games a lot more than other grunge bands.; for example, the band’s repertoire has been featured in Say Anything, Wayne’s World, True Romance, of course Singles, and even the 2016 Avengers film. Something about the songwriting often feels cinematic. David Fincher could have used “Head Down” at the end of Fight Club instead of Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?”. When I listen to this song I picture Edward Norton staring out of those floor-to-ceiling windows, flashes of flame against a grey/green landscape.
Black Hole Sun
It’s interesting that this is a song that took Soundgarden so long to get right. Listening to old demos, you can hear their echoes in the final version. (Literally - the demo version on the album’s Deluxe Edition spaces out Chris’ vocals so he ends up with a slightly irritating echo.) Inarguably their biggest hit, “Black Hole Sun” has grown overplayed to the point of exhaustion. I was born eight years after this album was released and it’s tired even for me, let alone people who were trapped listening to it on repeat in the 90s.
Spoonman
This is one of those songs that gets easily stuck in your head but makes you look like an idiot if you sing it absentmindedly at work.
Limo Wreck
“Limo Wreck” employs the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ school of lyric writing where it’s really just listing things. Not in a bad way - the lyrics are creating a vibe, man. A Pinterest board of a song.
The Day I Tried to Live
The beginning instrumentals of the song are almost coy, quiet enough to not warn you of the sheer noise of the song’s climax. The vocals on this are breathtaking - as unbelievable as Cornell’s death feels, his vocals on this song make the fact of his mere existence feel miraculous. And Steven Hyden, in his countdown of the best Soundgarden songs, was right: the ‘one more time around’ riff is really fucking catchy.
Kickstand
This is Soundgarden’s least idiosyncratic song of the album. The guitar sound is actually very early 2000s, reminiscent of Jet, the Hives, or The Fratellis - in this way they were perhaps ahead of their time. In an alternative universe, this would be used as the theme music for BBC’s Live at the Apollo.
Fresh Tendrils
Hyden’s omission of “Fresh Tendrils” on his list boggles my mind. “Give me a little bit of / more than I can take” is some of the best songwriting on the album. The “shame, shame / throw yourself away” conveys an insanity that screeches through this album, personified in the cover art. There's a relentlessness in these lyrics that feels so brutal.
4th of July
Hyden ranked this song as his favourite of all time and, once again, he was correct. He writes, “It sounds filthy, like a demo caked in grime and banana peels. Matt Cameron sounds like he did a massive bong rip before stepping behind the drums. Kim Thayil plays the guitar like it just slept with his wife. Cornell sings like a zombie version of himself. It’s extremely evil and I can’t get enough of it.” This song is apocalyptic, zombie grunge and it fucking rocks. It is perfection from beginning to end and there is nothing I would change about it. Plus, the double vocals are fun; I picture a tiny little Chris sitting on Big Chris’ shoulder (á la Big Cook, Little Cook) singing the high parts.
Half
After “4th of July” we needed a Pretty Little Ditty (can’t talk about grunge without making constant RHCP parallels, sorry) and “Half” gives us exactly that. As much as I do love the song’s eastern influence, the Beatles vibe here is overdone to the point where it feels a little bit silly. I love it when rock bands get silly but not necessarily at track fourteen in a fifteen-track album.
Like Suicide
Give it up once again for Matt Cameron’s drumming. It would be crude to suggest that Pearl Jam got Soundgarden’s sloppy seconds in the rhythm section, but here I am making that joke regardless. Part of the benefit of being a grunge fan decades after the scene was most popular is that I, rightfully, identify Matt Cameron, not Dave Krusen, not Dave Abbruzzese, and not Jack Irons, as Pearl Jam’s drummer. I’m not attached merely to whoever was drumming for the band when I first got into them, I’m attached to the only Pearl Jam drummer who’s been with them longer than two years. But I digress.
His playing is so masterful; the cymbals crash and linger, pattering like rain against the smooth, hard surface of Cornell’s voice. In that Lollapalooza performance he hammers away at the back of the stage, precise but full of power. This could describe all of Soundgarden: technically adept but possessing a divinely-given capacity for raw energy.
Soundgarden is a great all-rounder. They have excellent vocals, Cameron’s expert rhythm section, and innovative guitar work. On this album they feature the silly songs of “Spoonman” and the gut-wrenching lyrics of “4th of July”, but even here, as with everything Soundgarden, things flip. “4th of July” is not the declaration of patriotism that the title suggests but in fact was inspired by an acid trip; on the “Spoonman” in question Cornell gets philosophical in his admiration, writing, “the paradox of who [Artis] is and what people perceive him as”. This balance is what sets them apart from the other bands within their scene.
My one gripe with this album is its length. Cornell, in an interview with Spin, admits that, “we didn’t really want to argue over what should be cut,” and it shows. There is fluff here that could and should have been picked off. Getting rid of any three of “Limo Wreck”, “Kickstand”, “Half”, and “Like Suicide” would make it a 12-track album and really condense it. With Superunknown, the members of Soundgarden went away and wrote their own songs, then lumped them together with little thread attaching them. There are certainly thematic and musical similarities - trademarks, even - but this album could have benefitted from some more thought into a central idea. In other words: it drags.
Grunge is a weird ‘genre’ because it’s not really a genre at all. There have long been arguments over whether it’s a style of music or just a mode of dress. What is it, musically, that unifies and is unique to the bands we collate under that label? The truth is - not much. The unifying element of grunge is not just their punk and hair metal origins, not just their politics, not just the flannel, but the community. It could only have been conceived by a group of poor, unlikable kids in a city too far out for anyone important to come to. So they were formed by who they had access to. Kim Thayil, on an episode of The 500 with Josh Adam Meyers podcast, recalls Prince skipping Seattle on a tour due to a lack of an African American audience in the city, but shows from Black Flag and Hüsker Dü were well-attended. I use the term “grunge” here a lot because it highlights just how much Soundgarden stood out from their peers. “We wanted to show that we stood alone and outside of what was becoming a convenient geographic group that we were inside,” Cornell said to Rolling Stone in 2014. They were beyond grunge, which is all the more sad given how younger artists in the scene experienced more longevity after the era’s end.