Saturday, May 20, 2017

Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun

Link

Via Wikipedia: Regarding "Black Hole Sun", Cornell stated, "It's just sort of a surreal dreamscape, a weird, play-with-the-title kind of song." He also said that "lyrically it's probably the closest to me just playing with words for words' sake, of anything I've written. I guess it worked for a lot of people who heard it, but I have no idea how you'd begin to take that one literally." In another interview he elaborated further, stating, "It's funny because hits are usually sort of congruent, sort of an identifiable lyric idea, and that song pretty much had none. The chorus lyric is kind of beautiful and easy to remember. Other than that, I sure didn't have an understanding of it after I wrote it. I was just sucked in by the music and I was painting a picture with the lyrics. There was no real idea to get across." Commenting upon how the song was misinterpreted as being positive, Cornell said, "No one seems to get this, but 'Black Hole Sun' is sad. But because the melody is really pretty, everyone thinks it's almost chipper, which is ridiculous." When asked about the line, "Times are gone for honest men", Cornell said:
It's really difficult for a person to create their own life and their own freedom. It's going to become more and more difficult, and it's going to create more and more disillusioned people who become dishonest and angry and are willing to fuck the next guy to get what they want. There's so much stepping on the backs of other people in our profession. We've been so lucky that we've never had to do that. Part of it was because of our own tenacity, and part of it was because we were lucky.

4 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Despite all the accolades, the song didn't make it to the Rolling Stone magazine top 500 rock songs of all time.

chickelit said...

Too nihilistic for my taste. I get more inspired listening to old Black Sabbath.

The Dude said...

This one needed a tag - I mistakenly listened to part of it. How did that depressed sumbitch manage to make it to 52?

Methadras said...

Lem said...
Despite all the accolades, the song didn't make it to the Rolling Stone magazine top 500 rock songs of all time.


That's because in reality the song sucks. It's lyrically absurd and frankly boring.