Was that about struggling to find a songwriting voice writing songs for yourself, as opposed the band?
When I made the solo album with Timbaland, that was obviously a conscious effort to do something completely different than anything I’d ever done in every way—and it was. I was introduced to a whole different method of songwriting, of recording, of what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. It was a different set of rules. (I took some of that into the most recent Soundgarden album, just in terms of what songwriting can be. One of the songs, called “Rowing,” I took a loop from about seven seconds of Ben [Shepherd] playing a cool thing on bass, that he didn’t even remember he’d played and I built the whole song around it. A few years before that I wouldn’t have thought that could work… but it does! [laughs].
By Beth Kellmurray. “Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart,” the first taste of Chris Cornell’s upcoming solo album, Higher Truth, already proves to be a departure from its predecessor, 2009’sTimbaland-produced Scream. But in an interview with Rolling Stone, Cornell insists Scream’s hefty criticism wasn’t a matter of demerit but rather poor timing. Cornell argues Scream would receive a different response were it released today:
“I don’t think there was any reference for ['Scream'] at the time. And obviously, the world of recorded and released music is a world that required reference 99 times out of 100. I mean, even for me, I could stand on a soap box and say that art shouldn’t require reference and then still make references to you. When I hear a band I’m gonna say something like, ‘It’s a cross between Abba and the band Swans.’ So I get it. The response to the album didn’t surprise me. But I do think there is more context for it now. I wanted the album to be intimate and small and so I didn’t want to hire a band,”Cornell said.