Black Hole Sun is a song recorded by Soundgarden for their fourth studio album, Superunknown, which was released on March 8, 1994. It is one of the band's most popular and recognizable songs. The song topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, where it spent a total of seven weeks at number one. Despite peaking at number two on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, "Black Hole Sun" finished as the number-one track of 1994 for that listing. Worldwide, the single reached the top 10 in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, and Iceland, where it reached number one.
"Black Hole Sun" was included on Soundgarden's 1997 greatest hits album A-Sides and also appeared on the 2010 compilation album Telephantasm.
Origin and recording[]
"Black Hole Sun" was written by frontman Chris Cornell. In 2014, Cornell explained the song's origins to Uncut Magazine:
I wrote it in my head driving home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, a 35-40 minute drive from Seattle. It sparked from something a news anchor said on TV and I heard wrong. I heard 'blah blah blah black hole sun blah blah blah'. I thought that would make an amazing song title, but what would it sound like? It all came together, pretty much the whole arrangement including the guitar solo that's played beneath the riff. I spent a lot of time spinning those melodies in my head so I wouldn't forget them. I got home and whistled it into a Dictaphone. The next day I brought it into the real world, assigning a couple of key changes in the verse to make the melodies more interesting. Then I wrote the lyrics and that was similar, a stream of consciousness based on the feeling I got from the chorus and title.
Cornell said that he wrote the song in about 15 minutes. He used a Gretsch guitar to write the song, and commented, "I wrote the song thinking the band wouldn't like it—then it became the biggest hit of the summer." Cornell came up with the song while using a Leslie speaker. Guitarist Kim Thayil said that the Leslie model 16 speaker was perfect for the song as "it's very Beatlesque and has a distinctive sound. It ended up changing the song completely." Thayil said that the song "wasn't safe as milk, but it wasn't glass in someone's eye either. It was the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Now it's the 'Dream On' of our set." The song was performed in drop D tuning. Drummer Matt Cameron called the song "a huge departure". Credit is due to Michael Beinhorn and Brendan O'Brien, producer and recording engineer, respectively.
Appearing on The Pods & Sods Network in July 2017, Beinhorn detailed the process of recording Superunknown and shared his reaction to first hearing "Black Hole Sun": "I think for the rest of my entire life, until I draw my last breath, I'll never ever forgot how I felt when they started playing that song. From the very first few notes, I felt like I'd been hit by a thunderbolt. I was just absolutely stunned. What in the world is this? I get goosebumps thinking about it now."
Track listing[]
All songs were written by Chris Cornell, except when noted.
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Black Hole Sun"
5:18
2.
"Black Hole Sun" (edit)
4:31
CD (Europe and Germany)
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Black Hole Sun"
5:18
2.
"Like Suicide" (acoustic)
6:11
3.
"Kickstand[1]" (live; written by Cornell and Kim Thayil)
1:58
CD (Europe)
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Black Hole Sun"
5:18
2.
"Jesus Christ Pose[2]" (live; written by Matt Cameron, Cornell, Ben Shephard and Thayil)
7:19
3.
"My Wave[1]" (live; written by Cornell and Thayil)