This series is about influential music and what it did to me. It’s inspired by Jeff Tweedy’s book World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music. After Tomorrow, I’m turning to Black Hole Sun.

Imagine you’re the frontman of a grunge band in Seattle in 1993. You’ve finished three studio albums; you’re deep in a fourth. Your producer walks in and challenges you to write with more integrity—not to lean toward what you think the fans want. You chew on that.

One day you leave the studio. On the drive home, a song starts to assemble in your head. Somewhere in the noise, you catch a phrase from the radio: Black Hole Sun. You start to wonder what a song with that title would even sound like. By the time you reach your destination 30–45 minutes later, you have the song.

That’s the story that’s been told of Chris Cornell and this track. There are people who believe you can brute-force a song, and people who believe songs are channeled—that the artist is a conduit. This one lands for me in the second camp. It feels as if Cornell had been opened by the challenge, and in that openness he heard something new and materialized it.

Black Hole Sun is a special song by any measure. Superunknown was the first full-length album I owned—on cassette. I listened to it on repeat, alone in my room, until I’d steeped myself in it and brought it to a boil. I can only hope some of that magic seeped in.

The song itself is bizarre; I’m not sure what to compare it to. It opens with something you didn’t hear much from Seattle grunge bands around then—a slide guitar. Kim Thayil had a hard time with it; he gravitated toward riff-heavy parts, and this felt too delicate. The compromise made history. Next to hits that leaned on heavy gain and big chords, Black Hole Sun was operating in negative space—gigantic without the band playing gigantic. If this isn’t my favorite song of all time, it’s very close. That something so beautiful came from a group willing to be stretched doesn’t surprise me.

This song broke my definition of rock. It’s unmistakably rock as a whole, but when you take it apart it feels like it shouldn’t have worked—like the band’s own expansion in writing, it expands the listener into a vessel better equipped to explore the depth of what could be.

Black Hole Sun expanded my universe.

Official video:

References

  1. Wikipedia, “Black Hole Sun” (Soundgarden song) — release 13 May 1994, third Superunknown single, chart history; Chris Cornell sole songwriter; Michael Beinhorn and Soundgarden credited as producers; recording at Bad Animals (Seattle); Cornell origin quote: commute from Bear Creek, misheard TV line, Dictaphone. (Community-maintained—spot-check contentious claims.)
  2. Uncut (Peter Watts), “Chris Cornell and Soundgarden remember ‘Black Hole Sun’” — feature first in August 2014 (Uncut); this URL republished 19 May 2017; Cornell on the drive home and misheard phrase.
  3. Rolling Stone (Kory Grow), “Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell on ‘Superunknown,’ Depression and Kurt Cobain” — 19 May 2017 oral-history-style interview tying Superunknown era to Cornell’s headspace (depression, Cobain).
  4. Martin Kielty, How Soundgarden Producer Told Chris Cornell to Write Better Songs, Ultimate Classic Rock — 20 Dec 2023 piece summarizing producer Michael Beinhorn (via Rick Beato interview) on demos, “second‑rate Soundgarden” material, fan‑service songwriting, Beatles/Cream prompt, reaction to “Black Hole Sun” demo.
  5. Rachel Roberts, Kim Thayil on why Chris Cornell played guitar on “Black Hole Sun”, Guitar.com, 25 Mar 2024 — web article quoting Guitar Player; Leslie cabinet, verse arpeggios, Cornell tracking delicate parts.
  6. Soundgarden (YouTube), “Black Hole Sun” (official music video) — longstanding upload by the band’s channel; iframe above uses youtube-nocookie with the same video ID (3mbBbFH9fAg).
  7. Scott Munro, Original Superunknown cover photo revealed, Louder / Classic Rock (19 June 2017) — identifies photographer Kevin Westenberg and the pre‑warp‑filter “screaming elf” sitting; hero JPEG in this theme from that story’s CDN image; © Westenberg via publication—local /images/soundgarden-superunknown-westenberg-hero.jpg for build only.