another side of chris cornell

singer distances himself from hard rock

by evan rytlewski, shepherd express, july 12 2007

Chris Cornell is so comfortable and so talkative during interviews that there's almost no need to ask him questions. You just get on the phone and he essentially conducts the conversation for you, answering any question you intend to pose before you get a chance to ask. It's a little creepy, actually, sometimes giving the impression that Cornell is mildly psychic (that his speaking voice resembles Christopher Walken's only completes the effect).

Cornell's sixth sense sure comes in handy, though, especially when it saves you from having to bring up awkward topics. In this case, the elephant in the room was Cornell's latest solo album, Carry On. The album has attracted mostly cold reviews from critics and, more troublingly, indifference from many of his oldest fans (the Internet is full of surprisingly rational, dispassionate reviews where fans explain how they love Cornell but lament that this disc just doesn't do it for them). It'd be a real conversation killer if I had to ask about this directly, but thankfully I don't have to. Unprompted, Cornell posits a theory about the album's chilly reception.

"I think there's a prejudicial thing going on with me right now," he speculates, "since I'm known almost entirely as someone who has fronted a band, different bands. The genre of hard rock is what I'm known for, and there aren't a lot of solo artists in that genre.

"I think some people's brains stop working when it comes to the subject of a singer they're used to being in a band suddenly not being in a band anymore," he adds. "They'll ask questions like, 'How do you make a record alone?' as if nobody has ever been a solo artist before, or as if I didn't write almost every single Soundgarden radio song by myself."

Better known for his work with Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog and Audioslave than as a marquee name on his own, Cornell resents being pigeonholed as a performer who can only work collaboratively with bands, and he sounds more than a little defensive about his legacy.

"In a sense, Temple of the Dog was kind of a solo record because I wrote most of the songs entirely alone," he says at one point (again unprompted). These are my songs, he's saying, and damn it, I want the credit for them.

While Cornell concedes that he's considered a hard-rock performer, he's not happy about it. He says he's been saddled with that stigma since Soundgarden first signed to a major label in 1989.

"[A&M Records] didn't really know what to do with us, so they publicized us in magazines, print press and television as commercial heavy metal," he recalls. "Even the Grammy I won for 'Black Hole Sun'"—note how he says "I" and not "Soundgarden" here—"was Best Metal Performance. 'Black Hole Sun' really has nothing to do with heavy metal that I can think of. So I could see the confusion from the very beginning of our major label career.

"I've been sort of battling the whole genre issue since I've been making records, really," he continues. "I always felt like I should be like the Beatles and just do what I want. If they can do 'Yesterday' and 'Helter Skelter,' then I should be able to do the same thing."

And so the stifled singer branched out considerably on his latest disc, much to many fans' disappointment. Carry On largely tempers the heavy grind of Cornell's past bands in favor of softer singer-songwriter reflections and stabs of studio-polished rhythm and blues.

By Cornell's own admission the album has no underlying concept—it's just a set of songs he enjoys singing—so it's not surprising that it sounds disjointed. The rock numbers fair well, especially when they showcase Cornell's explosive vocal range, and the closer, "You Know My Name," from Casino Royale, sounds less overblown than it did in the film. But the tortured, coffeehouse cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" is nothing short of bizarre, and Cornell's newly sunny predisposition (he's now sober, and living in France with his wife, who he loves very, very much) simply doesn't lend itself to the same thrills as the grungy despondence that drove his early '90s work.

On some level, though, perhaps the reason Cornell's fans have rejected the album is that it reflects the "American Idol"-ification of rock music. Fox's hit talent search now regularly features rockers (you can tell they're rockers because of how they groom themselves) proving they have pop-chart potential by singing all sorts of genres that have little to do with rock—which is pretty much what Cornell does here. Although still clad in angst-ridden, rock-star black, now he's singing overproduced soul numbers, torch songs and, for some reason, a Michael Jackson cover. The Soundgarden frontman has recorded what might as well be a Bo Bice album.

First published online at Shepherd Express

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2007