Black Hole Sun

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the Vampire Diaries episode, see Black Hole Sun (The Vampire Diaries). For the hypothetical astronomical object sometimes called a 'black hole star', see Quasi-star.

"Black Hole Sun"
Single by Soundgarden
from the album Superunknown
B-side
  • "Like Suicide" (acoustic)
  • "Kickstand" (live)
ReleasedAugust 8, 1994 (UK)
Bad Animals (Seattle, Washington)
Genre
Length5:18
LabelA&M
Songwriter(s)Chris Cornell
Producer(s)
Soundgarden singles chronology
"The Day I Tried to Live"
(1994) 		"Black Hole Sun"
(1994) 		"My Wave"
(1994)
Music video
"Black Hole Sun" on
YouTube

"Black Hole Sun" is a song by American

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, and Ireland, while in Iceland, 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

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.[2]

Cornell said that he wrote the song in about 15 minutes.

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."[7]

Composition

"Black Hole Sun" sample
"With its weepy, vibrato-guitar arpeggios and spare drums, the verses on 'Black Hole Sun' pave the way for a gloriously pounding metallic chorus."[8]
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Musically, "Black Hole Sun" has been described as

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."[17] 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."[18]
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.[19]

Release and critical reception

"Black Hole Sun" was released as a single in mid-1994. It became the most successful song from Superunknown on American rock charts, and became the band's best-known song overall.

1995 Grammy Awards, "Black Hole Sun" received the award for Best Hard Rock Performance and received a nomination for Best Rock Song.[21]

Outside the United States, the single was released in Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In Canada, the song reached the top 10 on the

airplay and a promotional visit to Australia stimulated a resurgence of interest in Superunknown. "Black Hole Sun" would peak at number six on the Australian Singles Chart. "Black Hole Sun" reached the top 30 in Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, and was a top-10 success in France and Ireland. It topped the Icelandic Singles Chart for a week and was a moderate top-20 success in Sweden. The single has sold over three million copies worldwide.[22]

Greg Prato of

J.D. Considine of Rolling Stone stated, "With its yearning, Lennonesque melody and watery, Harrison-style guitar, 'Black Hole Sun' is a wonderful exercise in Beatleisms; trouble is, it's not a very good song, offering more in the way of mood and atmosphere than melodic direction."[28]

The solo for "Black Hole Sun", performed by Thayil, was ranked number 63 on

Nielsen Music's year-end report for 2019, "Black Hole Sun" was the ninth most-played song of the decade on mainstream rock radio with 125,000 spins. All of the songs in the top 10 were from the 1990s.[33] In 2017, Billboard ranked the song number four on their list of the 15 greatest Soundgarden songs,[34] and in 2021, Kerrang ranked the song number one on their list of the 20 greatest Soundgarden songs.[35]

Music video

The

Hollywood, California) and Soho 601 Effects (London). The video follows a suburban neighborhood and its vain inhabitants with comically exaggerated grins, which are eventually swallowed up when the Sun suddenly turns into a black hole, while the band performs the song somewhere in an open field. In the video, Cornell is wearing a fork necklace given to him by Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon.[3] In an online chat, the band stated that the video "was entirely the director's idea", and added, "Our take on it was that at that point in making videos, we just wanted to pretend to play and not look that excited about it."[37] They said that the video was one of the few Soundgarden videos the band was satisfied with.[38]

The video was released in June 1994.[39] After several weeks of airplay on MTV, a second version of the video was substituted containing more elaborate visual effects than the original, including the addition of a computer-generated black hole. The music video for "Black Hole Sun" became a hit on MTV and received the award for Best Metal/Hard Rock Video at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.[40] In 1995, it received the Clio Award for Alternative Music Video.[41] The video is available on the CD-ROM Alive in the Superunknown.

Accolades

Publication Country Accolade Year Rank
Guitar World United States "100 Greatest Guitar Solos"[29] 2007 63
VH1 United States "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s"[31] 2007 25
VH1 United States "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs"[32] 2008 77
Robert Dimery United States 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die[42] 2010 *
Rolling Stone United States "500 Greatest Songs of All Time"[43] 2021 368
Kerrang! United Kingdom "100 Greatest Singles of All Time"[citation needed] 2002 49
Q United Kingdom "The 1001 Best Songs Ever"[44] 2003 543
Total Guitar United Kingdom "100 Hottest Guitar Solos"[30] 2006 56
The Movement New Zealand "The 100 (+300) Greatest Songs of All Time"[citation needed] 2004 80
The Movement New Zealand "The 77 Best Singles of the 90s"[citation needed] 2004 32
Pure Pop Mexico "The 100 Best Singles of All Time"[citation needed] 2003 100
Spex Germany "Singles of the Year"[45] 1994 15
Rock & Pop Chile "Rock&Pop 20 Años 200 Canciones"[46] 2013 174

* denotes an unordered list.

Track listing

All songs were written by Chris Cornell except where noted.

CD (Europe and Germany)

  1. "Black Hole Sun"  – 5:18
  2. "Like Suicide" (acoustic)  – 6:11
  3. "Kickstand" (live) (Cornell, Kim Thayil)  – 1:58

CD (Europe)

  1. "Black Hole Sun"  – 5:18
  2. "Jesus Christ Pose" (live) (Matt Cameron, Cornell, Ben Shepherd, Thayil)  – 7:19
  3. "My Wave" (live) (Cornell, Thayil)  – 4:34
    • Recorded live on August 20, 1993, at Jones Beach Amphitheater in Wantagh, New York
  4. "Spoonman" (Steve Fisk remix)  – 6:55

Box set (UK)

  1. "Black Hole Sun"  – 5:18
  2. "Beyond the Wheel" (live)  – 5:56
  3. "
    Fell on Black Days
    " (live)  – 4:45
  4. "Birth Ritual" (demo) (Cornell, Cameron, Thayil)  – 5:50

CD (Australia and Germany)

  1. "Black Hole Sun"  – 5:18
  2. "Jesus Christ Pose" (live) (Cameron, Cornell, Shepherd, Thayil)  – 7:19
  3. "Beyond the Wheel" (live)  – 5:54

7-inch vinyl (UK) and cassette (UK)

  1. "Black Hole Sun"  – 5:18
  2. "My Wave" (live) (Cornell, Thayil)  – 4:34
    • Recorded live on August 20, 1993, at Jones Beach Amphitheater in Wantagh, New York
  3. "Beyond the Wheel" (live)  – 5:54
    • Recorded live on August 18, 1993, at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

7-inch vinyl (US)

  1. "Black Hole Sun"  – 5:18
  2. "Spoonman"  – 4:06

Personnel

Personnel are taken from the liner notes of Superunknown.[47]

Soundgarden

Charts

Certifications

Certifications and sales for "Black Hole Sun"
Region Certification Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)[79] Gold 35,000^
Italy (FIMI)[80] Gold 25,000‡
United Kingdom (BPI)[81] Gold 400,000‡

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

Release history

Release dates and formats for "Black Hole Sun"
Region Date Format(s) Label(s) Ref.
United States 1994 — A&M
United Kingdom August 8, 1994
  • 7-inch vinyl
  • CD
  • CD box set
  • cassette
 [82]

In popular culture

Black Hole Sun is on the base set list for the original Rock Band game.[83]

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock features the song in its downloadable content library, and it is a playable track in the TV mode of Guitar Hero Live.[84]

A cover version in the style of lounge music was performed by

Eydie Gorme.[85]

A polka cover of a section of the song was made by Weird Al Yankovic [86]

References

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External links

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