Chris Cornell, from Yesterday to Tomorrow

Chris Cornell entered my personal universe in the 1990s as the lead singer of Soundgarden, a slim and gorgeous dark-haired man with piercing blue eyes, a haunted expression and a voice with the depth and turbulence of an unmapped ocean. The music he produced was complex but emotionally direct, the very embodiment of popular culture as timeless art, universal in its ability to affect, to communicate, to engage the listener and draw them into a world of unanswered questions in which they were, if still alienated, no longer alone. In short, he was like a living male lead from a novel aimed at teenage girls: a cross between errant tomcat and fallen angel. Then, horror of horrors, he tried to enter the mainstream and became the embodiment of everyone's embarrassing uncle who thinks he is cooler than he actually is. But how did it happen? Let us have a look at his three solo albums, and wildly speculate with the gratuitous use of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Cornell has been in a few bands, all of which have been lauded for being ground-breaking in one way or another - Soundgarden, the original grunge-masters, Temple of the Dog, and Audioslave, a supergroup with a social conscience if not always a sky-high average IQ (I watched the DVD they released about their tour of Cuba - one of them wanted to ride a mountain bike down a slope that ended on a major freeway - #DarwinAward). Cornell's contributions to these bands were substantial, both in terms of musical virtuosity (he has an impressive vocal range and technical control miles above the average for a grunge/rock/punk/metal singer), but also as composer and lyricist of the bulk of the material. There is no doubt his best work was produced in a band-setting; Soundgarden's Superunknown is a legendary album, and not just because some of the title's letters were printed backwards. Audioslave may occasionally sound a bit turgid, but they also produced some great things. For example, listen to the transition between verse, chorus and bridge in 'Doesn't Remind Me'. It has electric guitars and is interesting, what more could you want from life? So given Cornell's central role in the creative process of these bands, you'd think his solo albums would be phenomenal. Instead, they display a markedly downhill trajectory. Let's take a closer look.


Cornell's first solo album, Euphoria Morning, was released in 1999 after the massive success of Soundgarden in the mid 1990s. It is an album with an individual voice, even if it does occasionally sound like the voice of one of those YA heroes with overly sharp cheekbones and possibly wings. Some songs are masterful. 'Preaching the End of the World' captures several unique elements of nineties culture: you imagine the speaker connected to a chat-room via dialup modem (remember the sound those things made?), speaking to a stranger and trying to convince them and themselves of their sanity ('I've got a photograph, I'll send it off today;/ you will see that I am perfectly sane'), the oxymoron of living in a world where all problems have been solved with the exception of human misery:

Hello, I know there's someone out there

who can understand, and who's feeling
the same way as me.
I'm twenty-four and I've got everything to live for
but I know now
that it wasn't meant to be

Because all has been lost
and all has been won
and there's nothing left for us to save
But now I know that I don't want to be alone today
so if you're finding that you're feeling just the same

Call me now, it's alright
it's just the end of the world
you'll need a friend in the world
'cause you can't hide
So call and I'll get right back
if your intentions are pure
seeking a friend for the end of the world.

The lyrical content of this song is powerful, and engaged with the issues of the time when it was written. The speaker is expressing a sort of isolation created not just by the imagined impending doom of the world, but by his inability to imagine the future in the terms that his parents did. This is expressed more clearly in the second half of the song, when he details the future that he and his proposed new friend will never have:

Not for a lifetime or forever and a day,
cause we know now that just won't be the case
...
There'll be no commitment and
No confessions and
No little secrets to keep
No little children
or houses with roses
Just the end of the world and me

What he is describing is the negation of the traditional patriarchal narrative of adulthood - in this instance, he and his friend are denied the possibility of a beautiful heteronormative future because of the impending end of the world. Yet this end need not be a literal armageddon; perhaps what is gone is the entrenched set of social values that determined what people should want, and how they should interact with each other. This can be read as a love song for a new generation - instead of offering the future, he offers one fleeting moment of shared understanding as everything explodes and they watch from the same vantage point:

Cause all has been and gone
And all has been done
And there's nothing left for us to save
We could be together as they blow it all away
And we can share in every moment as it breaks

Though I think 'Preaching the End of the World' is by far the best song on Euphoria Morning, the album as a whole is not far behind - it explores meaty themes like alienation, mental illness and human relationships, all within an engaging yet simple soundscape that foregrounds Cornell's exceptional voice. It's not The Superunknown, but the two exist in the same universe.

After Euphoria Morning, Audioslave happened. I love their three albums very much, but won't go into too much detail here - suffice it to say that they produced some awesome rock music somewhat to the mainstream side of the works of Soundgarden. In 2007 Cornell revisited his solo career, with Carry On. This album is really something of a mixed bag - on the one hand, there are some really, really good songs on there. Cornell's Bond theme, 'You Know My Name', is both great and Bondworthy, while his dark, acoustic cover of 'Billie Jean' creates resonances with Jackson's original that just make the world stand still. And then he goes off on a bit of a cheese-fest about falling in love with 'Scar Upon the Sky', and 'Finally Forever'. Even so, neither is too terrible - a man is entitled to his emotions, and it's ok to release love songs about your wife. In fact, it's kind of cute. Which makes what he went on to do next all the more baffling:

Scream (2009) is a total abomination. Apparently, someone told Cornell he needed to co completely mainstream and produce some pop music, and despite good choices in his collaborators the result is Euphoria Morning, which tended to focus on Cornell's not-unphotogenic face, or the videos released with Audioslave and Soundgarden songs which tended to feature the band doing their thing interspersed with images of variable weirdness (barbie dolls on a bbq, anyone?), 'Part Of Me' places Cornell in a bar full off good looking people, scantily clad good looking people, who are doing something that may be dancing but is mostly writhing. This is not his natural environment. Presumably because of Cornell's limited writhing abilities, he remains seated for the duration of the video, initially at a table, and looking like a normal person, and then straddling a chair while people line dance behind him and partially expose their breasts. This is just weird. It does not make him look cool, it makes him look like everyone's embarrassing uncle who doesn't realise that ageing has happened to him, too, and he is no longer 'down with the kids'. Apart from anything else, the whole thing is so unnecessary. The difference between this video and the more indie-rock productions in Cornell's past is that it is stuffed to the rafters with overt sexual references - the muscular men, the bosomy women, the tight clothing, the writhing, and writhing and writhing. But just watch the video for 'Preaching the End of the World': it is incredibly sexy. And Cornell is wearing a black t-shirt and sporting questionable facial topiary. The man is handsome, why would you try to turn him into Pitbull? I mean seriously, what for?
simply horrifying. Take, as a case study, 'Part Of Me', the first single, produced by Timbaland. Let us begin with the video: unlike the slightly quirky videos that went with

This analysis brings us to the issue of the song itself: it is Sexist. Misogynist. Chauvinist. We're talking Thickie Robin Thicke proportions. For your delectation, here are some of the lyrics:

Little girl, I love when she talks to me
Got to smile when she walks that walk with me

I want the girl but I want a lot
Might cross my mind, but that's where it stops

Oh, that bitch ain't a part of me
No, that bitch ain't a part of me
[repeat far more times than strictly necessary]

I love the girl, I'm loving the dress she wears
She's got a hold, got a hold of my neck, oh yeah
I wanna cry, the way that she moves
I want the girl but not what she's going through

Oh, that bitch ain't a part of me
No, that bitch ain't a part of me
[repeat ad nauseum]

She was so friendly, I had one too many
But now that they tell she was rubbing up against me
But I swear, never meant a thing, she was just a fling
There's no other woman who does it like you

That bitch ain't a part of me

No, that bitch ain't a part of me
[repeat until untimely death from Cultural Withdrawal Syndrome]

As you can see, most of the song consists of the repetition of the line 'That Bitch aint a part of me'. That's got to be up there with Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' for needlessly dismissive attacks on women's humanity. I mean really, Christopher, is that any way to speak to a person? Here is a sample of my reaction from when the song came out: 'What does it even mean? Is it a protest against the biblical view of women as descended from Adam’s rib? And what’s going on in the song? It seems like an incoherent attempt to blame a woman for a man’s cheating on another woman, because ‘she was so friendly’, and he had ‘one too many’; but earlier on, he said ‘I want the girl, but not what she’s going through’. So he wants the woman as objectified as a body, but is put off by her having a personality/life, so is going back to some other woman, and... I give up.' Needless to say, I had come to expect more of Cornell before this; and I have yet to understand why he made this album. Compare this to the quirky take on human relationships in 'Preaching the End' - the addressee is not even gendered, it could be anyone. That makes it liberating, an imaginatively rich experience to listen to the lyrics, which are left open to anyone regardless of gender or sexuality. 'Part of Me', on the other hand, alienates anyone identifying as female who does not wish to see herself as a 'bitch'. And it makes most men cringe. And it just isn't any good. 

As if it wasn't bad enough, misogyny is not the only problem with this album. It also indulges in poorly executed cultural appropriation - calling women 'bitches', and saying 'aint' are linguistic quirks associated with hip hop, and Black American culture. Thus someone like Jay Z can get away with telling us 'I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one' without being forever branded misogynist (not that I'm saying hip hop as a genre does not indulge in a bit of misogyny here, there and everywhere - but that's a tirade for another day). Cornell, on the other hand, cannot get away with using 'bitch' to mean 'woman'. Nor can he get away with addressing a woman as 'girl', or using the contraction 'aint'. It makes him look like an ageing duck out of water trying to ride a unicycle: it aint pretty.

I was thinking about this, and wondering if it reveals something about Cornell's experience of life through the music business. After all, the grunge and alternative rock scene he was part of for so many years in Soundgarden and Audioslave is overwhelmingly male and white. So maybe he just doesn't know any better. Nevertheless, that is no excuse. Get your shit together, Chris. Go on the internet, or something.

Hanson on Love: From Boys to Men

When I was young and innocent(er), I loved Hanson. Not so much in an ickily romantic kind of way (though if asked I'd have claimed to have a crush on Taylor, because at the time it was something like a social obligation for girls older than Zach but younger than Isaac to have a crush on Taylor); after all, the first few times I saw the video for Mmmbop I assumed the younger two were girls. (This is ironic, because at the time I had short hair, and everyone thought I was a boy. There's a lesson in there, somewhere.) What attracted me to Hanson then was their irrepressible sense of fun as is evident from the video for Mmmbop: they rollerblade (and fall over), catch a taxi and don't wear seat belts, ride a bus (a thrilling experience when first done without adult supervision that, alas, gets old fast), and at one point Zach emerges from a bin. Just because.

Recently, I stumbled across a couple of songs from their latest album, Anthem, and realised that I still love Hanson. But I also noticed that they occasionally reproduce misogynist conservative stereotypes in their lyrics. So I decided to have a look at the representation of women and love in Hanson songs, from Middle of Nowhere to the present day, strictly in the interests of dispassionate research and not at all because I wanted to go back and listen to it all again.

Middle of Nowhere (1997):

For an album mostly written by three boys who had not fully completed the journey through puberty, there is a great deal of focus on love, romance and girls. Overall, these songs are reminiscent of children parroting things they have heard about love and relationships. 'Where's the Love' exemplifies this bafflement in the first line: 'Something's been going on, and I don't know what it is'. The depth of their confusion is made apparent in the bridge:

We're separating, consciousness is fading
Are you thinking that it's me you're fooling?
Where's the right in, all of our fighting?
Look at, look at, look at what we're doing

This makes no sense - on the second run 'separating' is replaced with 'segregating', which makes marginally less sense, if anything. 

Interestingly, there are two songs that address particular girls: Madeline and Lucy. Both are fantastically lacking in substance. 'Lucy' tells the story of leaving a girl called Lucy, with no other context or detail, and essentially repeats the name as a mantra. In fact, the lyrics are so sparse it is almost poetic, even if it was written by an eleven-year-old. He leaves Lucy, she cries, he misses her; in the second verse it all happens again. Then the song ends. In 'Madeline', on the other hand, the lyrics are a bit more elaborate, in that a broader vocabulary is used; even so, the scope of the song is limited. The speaker is sad, because he didn't realise Madeline was the woman (or girl) of his dreams, and now it's all a mess, and something about roses, and why can't she see they're meant to be together.  It is perhaps a little stalkerish, but all in all a pretty effective distillation of unrequited romantic love, which suggests the author was not yet confused by actual feelings.

In Middle of Nowhere there are also reflections on non-romantic love. 'I Will Come To You' has almost pantomimic Christian overtones in both lyrics and video (the band wander around crowded streets surrounded bodily by halos of golden light - I'm still not sure why); these are incongruously mixed with what may be a breakup narrative (occupational hazard of writing by teenagers, perhaps). Then there is 'With You In Your Dreams', which they wrote about the death of their grandmother.

This Time Around (2000):

The tweenage years: 'If Only' is a convincingly realised expression of teenage love. By this I mean that it is self-contradictory, nonsensical, and contains far more borderline constipated emotion than would seem necessary for the topic in question. For example, a contradiction:

If only I had the guts to feel this way

Presumably if you didn't, you wouldn't, and so you wouldn't be worrying about it. But clearly the speaker is confused; take a look at the first verse, for instance:

Well every single time I see you it's like I feel this way 
It makes me wonder if I am ever gonna feel this way again. 
There's a picture that's hanging in the back of my head 
I see it over and over 
I wanna hold you and love you in my arms and then 
I wanna need you 'cause I need to be with you till the end 
Then I hear myself reply "You've got to hold it in" this time tonight 

This is a portrait of a first love, where the subject is feeling things that are unfamiliar and strange and weird, and doesn't know if they want to feel them, or if they have a choice, and thus self-contradictory nonsense and talking to oneself ensues. Full marks for verisimilitude - it's like the inner monologue of the main character approximately three-quarters of the way through every Young Adult novel ever.

Underneath (2004):

'Penny and Me' perhaps contains the most rounded female character in any of Hanson's songs; the chorus describes a series of activities the speaker and Penny enjoy together, pointing to a shared experience which creates the potential for real communication:

Cause Penny and me like to roll the windows down 
Turn the radio up, push the pedal to the ground 
And Penny and me like to gaze at starry skies 
Close our eyes, pretend to fly 
It's always Penny and me tonight 

Admittedly, the things they enjoy doing together are an homage to the most prevalent of romantic cliches, but nevertheless, Penny emerges from this as a character; we are told about what she likes to do, as well:

Penny likes to get away and drown her pain in lemonade 
Penny dreams of rainy days and nights up late by the fireplace 
And aimless conversations about the better days 

Not sure what the deal is with the lemonade, but the speaker's understanding of her and knowledge of the things she likes to do creates a positive image of a romantic relationship. He may not like to drown his pain in lemonade, however it is one does that, but he's happy to hang out anyway. According to some dodge site on the internet, Hanson have said that Penny is actually a symbol for music, and the song is full of references to music mixed in with oblique references to personal experiences. 'Penny' is named after the Beatles' 'Penny Lane', and there are references to Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon'.

Things go a little way downhill in the next couple of albums; both 'Give A Little' (Shout it Out, 2010) and 'Get the Girl Back' (Anthem, 2013) are variations on the theme of verb-that-noun, in which the subject is the man and the object is the woman.

'Give A Little' is particularly hopeless in this regard. Lyrically, it consists of a list of statements of what 'she' means and wants. It ventriloquises the lowest common denominator of magazine dating tips:

You gotta show her why she can't resist

Make her blush when you put your hand on her hips
She's gonna keep on playing until you stop chasing
So wrap your arms around her body
Tell her all she needs to know

This is revisited in  the second stanza:

You gotta show her, when she can't decide
You gotta hold her, with that look in your eyes
When you move in close, take your time
Leave an empty shoulder, let her move in closer
And wrap your arms around her body
Tell her all she needs to know

The repetition of 'tell her all she needs to know' positions the man in control of all information, the woman being given what he determines that she 'needs to know', and thus eroding her agency - this is reinforced by the opening of the second stanza, 'you gotta show her, when she can't decide': the man must help the feeble-brained female by telling her what to do, because obviously she can't decide for herself, right? The message is that unless the man shows the woman who is boss, she will wander off and sleep with other people. This is not really representative of the way human relationships work.

This is reiterated in 'Thinking 'Bout Somethin' ' (Shout it Out, 2010), which features a man emotionally distancing himself from a faithless woman. This is sort of disappointing, because the chorus hook 'I've been thinking 'bout somethin' other than you' could be a refreshing reference to the fact that there is more to life than romance. Unfortunately, this idea is put to rest when the song ends with the line 'I've been getting the love that moves me while you've been getting around' - the joke's on you, faithless woman, the Man doesn't even miss you...

Nevertheless, both songs have a sort of tongue-in-cheek cheerfulness, created by the combination of lively rhythms, catchy guitar riffs and canny use of brass; combined with the almost frenetic cheerfulness of the video clips (featuring much silly dancing and the wearing of old ladies' golf visors), it is actually quite hard to think of these as texts deliberately undermining the subjectivity of women. The songs and videos retain the spirit of fun apparent in the 'Mmmbop' video, with a richer, matured sound, if, sadly, lacking much depth of reflection on gender politics and the human condition.

'Get the Girl Back' raises suspicions with its title: who is this nameless girl, and why must she be got? And do you mean seduce her once again, or get revenge because she dared do something you didn't like? Having said that, the song is not as bad as it seems at first. The chorus hook is 'you've got to get the girl back on your side'; getting someone on your side does not imply they are a possession in the same way the 'get the girl back' does out of context - however, it still refers to 'the girl', as though the female gender is an empty signifier, and not an infinitely variable collection of individuals (is it a specific girl that must be 'got back on one's side', or just any girl as a representative of the female gender? Who knows? Should we care?).

Yet the omnipresent 'she' in Hanson's lyrics is not necessarily always a manifestation of unthinking erasure of female individuality - rather it may display a little-discussed aspect of male/female relations: the male experience of the female gaze. For example, the 'you' in 'River' (3 Car Garage, 1998).

Lately we've been talkin' 'bout who we are
Seems we don't know anymore
And all this time that we've been thinkin'
At night I've been dreamin' about youAnd I know you don't believe me when I say
I'll love you 'till the end - forever and a day

And I guess we'll never know
Exactly where this river's gonna flow
And I guess we'll never understand
Until we reach that promised land
So I guess we'll
I guess we'll never know

The chorus is a reflection on the unpredictability of life; however, it also functions as a reflection on the impossibility of truly complete understanding between individuals, and the relationship between this impossibility of understanding and the difficulty of articulating individual identity. So all in all, there are some interesting reflections on love, relationships and women in the works of Hanson. They just need to steer clear of that whole empty-signifier 'girl' thing. I mean, I understand the impulse to write about an anonymous and generalised love-symbol, particularly if you have a wife who may take it personally if you air the details of your sex life in your lyrics, but there is some middle ground. For How To Do It, see Jeff Buckley's 'Lover, you should have come over' and 'Last Goodbye'. Perhaps the secret is to omit gender if you're going to omit names...

One of the things that becomes apparent through looking at the progression of Hanson's albums is how much their music, and particularly the quality of their voices, has matured over time. All you need to look at to see just how formidable they are as musicians is their cover of 'Ain't no Sunshine'. Anthem is a good pop album, but who knows, if their lyrical ability catches up with their musicianship, they may yet produce an adult album legitimately described as 'great'. I'm less optimistic about Chris Cornell - watch this space for my deconstruction of his career.