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