shock value

by brendan voss, between the lines, april 2009

Best known as grunge pioneer and hard-rockin’ frontman of Soundgarden and Audioslave, Chris Cornell throws fans a club-friendly curveball with his third solo effort, Scream, a collaboration with sample-savvy hip-hop/R&B über-producer Timbaland.

Released March 10, the album even features Justin Timberlake and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, plus a hidden track co-written and co-produced by John Mayer. As Cornell launches his U.S. spring tour, the 44-year-old Grammy nominee denounces detractors and revels in favorable feedback from the gays. Any other questions? Just follow him on Twitter.

Because it’s such a sonic departure for you, Scream is shaping up to be one of the most polarizing albums in years. How do you feel about the stir it’s creating?

Chris Cornell: It’s actually kind of funny. The negative responses I’ve gotten are from people who don’t really buy my records anyway. The real fans aren’t the ones who are upset or complaining; they’re the biggest supporters. It’s an interesting sociological experiment, because on these social networking sites you can actually see the people making comments—where they’re from, how old they are, if they’re a man or a woman—so I start to draw conclusions about where the negativity’s coming from. If you’re an older guy in the United States, you’re most likely to make a negative comment. [Laughs] Older people who were exposed to me as teenagers might see a mutation they don’t like. But this album seems to resonate with the younger fans because they’re not judging it from any particular angle or with any criteria. 

What about Trent Reznor’s diss of Scream through his Twitter?

In terms of viral buzz, I got all kinds of free attention out of his comment, so that was really nice of him. [Laughs]

Then I was Twittering, and people tried to read into what I was writing because they thought I was secretly responding to him, but I wasn’t. To this day I haven’t read what he said.
 
On various online message boards, I’ve read comments from bitter listeners that Scream “sounds gay.” Is a gay-sounding album such a bad thing?

I don’t even know what that means. [Laughs] I guess a lot of people associate dance music with gay people, but only if you’re older, wear a Black Sabbath T-shirt and just listen to rock. Younger people are used to listening to dance music or being in social situations where there’s dance music. If someone says my record sounds gay, it’s definitely dating that person. Either that or they’re from a part of the country that’s isolated, but I don’t know if there’s a corner of this country that’s isolated enough where someone can be excused for having prejudices like that anymore. I have heard remixes of “Part of Me” in gay dance clubs.

Did you anticipate Scream being embraced by gay fans?

I have gay friends who listened to this album eight months ago, so I got the feeling from their responses that it might appeal more to that audience, which appeals to me. I didn’t really think about it going in, but the feedback I’ve gotten from the gay community has been great. It’s exciting. The more people my music speaks to the better, and that’s really what it’s all about to me: making a connection. When Seattle bands suddenly had more mainstream success, a lot of the band members were upset and started judging the people who came to see them, deciding they didn’t like this audience or that audience. It was a prejudice that I never wanted to have. Growing up, I didn’t feel like I fit in—I was little, I couldn’t play sports, I wasn’t good at school, I was socially awkward—and I ended up being this kid hidden in my room listening to records. That’s when the seed was planted that made me who I am. So I never got the concept of judgment, particularly of my audience.

David Cook covered your arrangement of “Billie Jean” from Carry On on American Idol, and later you co-wrote Cook’s first single, “Lights On.” Are you a fan of the show?

The pace is too slow for me. I want to see people sing; I don’t want to see someone sing for a minute and then talk about it for five minutes. He did my version of the song, which is a very dramatic reinvention, and the judges assumed that he had gone off and rearranged the song—they’re all standing up and weeping at the brilliance of it. But my fans went berserk, sending angry e-mails and letters to the show, because they felt it gave David credit for something he didn’t do.

Co-writing his first single was a coincidence. Someone asked me if I had songs for other artists, and I said, “Actually, no, I’m only writing for David Cook.” It was a joke! But he said, “Okay, I represent him.” So I said, “Well, actually, I do have a song I think would be great for him.” And that’s how it happened.

originally available as an online feature here

 

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2009