A couple of weeks after Kurt Cobain\u2019s suicide, a strange, sombre piece of American heavy rock hit the charts. With its moody refrain, hypnotic melody and gorgeous arpeggios, Soundgarden\u2019s \u201cBlack Hole Sun\u201d seemed to chime with the spirit of the times. It was also the song that brought Soundgarden a level of success that was long overdue. Soundgarden were the first band from the late-\u201980s Seattle scene to sign to a major label, although having dutifully polished their craft opening for the likes of Guns N\u2019 Roses, the colossal success enjoyed by Pacific Northwest peers like Nirvana and Pearl Jam had so far eluded them: \u201cthe sound of the underground going overground,\u201d as bassist Ben Shepherd puts it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But \u201cBlack Hole Sun\u201d was a grimy psychedelic behemoth, inescapable on radio and especially on MTV, thanks to what songwriter Chris Cornell calls a \u201ccomically interesting video\u201d. Nevertheless, the band had initially been wary of the song\u2019s huge commercial potential \u2013 for a while afterwards some of them would refuse to play it live \u2013 but Cornell notes that the song\u2019s innate strangeness meant that \u201c\u2018Black Hole Sun\u2019 didn\u2019t seem to corner us or create a problem, it provided a moment when a lot of eyes and ears were on us. We didn\u2019t have to recreate \u2018Black Hole Sun\u2019, we never felt that need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBlack Hole Sun\u201d \u2013 and its stunningly successful parent album Superunknown<\/em> \u2013 ushered in multi-platinum success and a Grammy for the band. Soundgarden split in 1997, reforming in 2010. During that time, \u201cBlack Hole Sun\u201d enjoyed a life of its own, covered and reinvented by everybody from Paul Anka to Anastacia. \u201cYou can spend an hour looking at different versions on YouTube and they are all very different,\u201d says Cornell. \u201cThe last one was a group called Strings Attached which starts normally and then completely freaks out with flute and violin. People send me links all the time and they seem to get weirder and weirder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n