Matt Cameron, Tad Doyle, Tom Morello and Ben Shepard in Seattle on Wednesday
Photo: Laura Musselman

It's the reunion grunge fanatics said would never, ever happen. On Wednesday night in Seattle, the former members of Soundgarden reunited for a brief set at the Seattle stop of Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello's Justice Tour. Well, all the members except singer Chris Cornell, who is busy promoting his Timbaland-helmed solo album.

The three other members of the group, reclusive guitar wizard Kim Thayil, current Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd — who have not played together since the band split in 1997 — were supplemented by hefty grunge semi-celebrity Tad Doyle for the gig, which was greeted with ecstatic cheers by the lucky fans in attendance.

According to the Seattle Weekly, during the surprise set at the city's Crocodile club, Morello, who said he has rarely been as excited, played rhythm guitar as the razor-blades-and-gravel-voiced Doyle sang lead on "Spoonman," during what was described as "a rare moment for Seattle rock and everybody in the venue knows it. Just moments earlier, the floor of the Crocodile was nearly shaking from all of the screaming fans who were waiting all night for this type of surprise. But most people didn't know what the surprise was."

The night opened with Morello playing a set as the Nightwatchman, followed by some songs from Steve Earle, a few tunes from the new Morello/ Boots Riley (the Coup) band Street Sweeper, sets from Mudhoney singer Mark Arm and former MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer.

"Right after that, Tadgarden hit the stage and the place went nuts," the Weekly reported, noting that the big question hanging over the reunion all night was whether Cornell would be behind the mic, a prospect most in the crowd knew was not likely given the band's acrimonious split. The newly dubbed supergroup started with "Nothing to Say," then hit "Spoonman" and ended with the leadoff track from the group's debut 1987 EP, Screaming Life, "Hunted Down." Just before he acid-gargled his way through "Spoonman," the beefy Doyle lifted up his shirt, jiggled his gut and joked, "That's half a Cornell right there."

After the show, when asked how he thought it went, Thayil reportedly said, "Not bad for an hour and a half of practice after not playing together for 12 years. ... It was a lot of fun. We played yesterday for a bit but we know all that stuff by heart so we didn't need to practice much."

The poorly kept secret was widely documented by a number of Seattle scenesters, showing up almost instantly in Flickr photostreams and a set of poor-quality MP3s and videos on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog site.

• Soundgarden
• Tad
• Mudhoney
• The Nightwatchman
• Rage Against the Machine

Chris Cornell
Photo: Sergio Dionisio/ Getty Images

NEW YORK — You may not have realized it, but you got a sneak peek of Chris Cornell's upcoming solo LP Scream on Thursday night — so long as you caught the series premiere of "Life on Mars," ABC's Americanized remake of the popular British cop drama, which stars Jason O'Mara, Michael Imperioli of "The Sopranos," Gretchen Mol and Harvey Keitel.

Cornell's tune, "Ground Zero," was not only featured in all the commercials leading up to Thursday night's premiere, but was also played over the pilot's action-packed opening sequence.

A few weeks ago, Cornell was in Brooklyn to shoot a video for the song, which, when finished, will feature tons of footage from "Life on Mars."

"We shot it on the street there, and we didn't have any extras or anything," Cornell told MTV News of the video for the September 11-inspired track. "It was really just a small crew and me, and a lot of it's just me on the streets of Brooklyn, intercut with footage from 'Life on Mars.' So it's kind of like I'm in the same neighborhood, and the footage was shot in a way so it can be intercut with footage from the show, which will have a vintage '70s feel to it. And I interacted with people on the street during the shoot, unbeknownst to them, so it was pretty funny. I'd just walk up to people and shake their hand or start talking to them. Everyone was really polite and didn't know what to do. Most of them were just trying to figure out what the hell we were doing down there."

But don't feel bad if you didn't recognize the former Soundgarden/Audioslave frontman's work. In fact, when fans actually get their hands on the Timbaland-helmed Scream they're going to immediately notice that the album sounds nothing like Cornell's past material. Beat-driven and sprinkled with elements of hip-hop, the album is a drastic departure for Chris — but to his ears, the record is just the next logical step in his ever-evolving career.

"For me, it was sort of a natural thing, to go out and make a record I hadn't made before," Cornell said. "It wasn't a situation where I sat for a long time and thought about what my next move should be. It was quick, and the idea came to me after Timbaland had done a couple of remixes from the Carry On album. It got back to me that he was actually a fan and was interested in doing original material, and I got on the phone with him, and I suggested we go make a whole album. He was interested in that idea, and before I knew it, we were in the studio."

Six weeks later, Cornell and Timbaland were finished writing Scream, and six months later, the record was completely tracked. Unlike Cornell's previous offerings, the disc is one "piece of music with orchestration that ties all the songs together and turns it into this album-oriented piece that, in some ways, I think is similar to albums of the '70s, where people still played an entire album at once."

While several tracks from the record are available for preview on sites like YouTube, Cornell said he's puzzled by the perception that Scream is a complete shift away from the sound his fans expect from him.

"It makes me happy that there's this perception that I have a group of fans that I'm now sort of throwing a curve at and what their reaction will be," he said. "But I've been in this situation so many times already that, to me, it doesn't really seem any different. When I put out [1999's] Euphoria Morning, my main goal was to create an album that sounded like nothing I'd done in Soundgarden, and I did that. And I got the same questions then. I also had that with Temple of the Dog, where I showed up with songs that weren't necessarily riff-based. And then, of course, the pairing of me and other members of Rage Against the Machine to do a band and everyone sort of speculating about what that would sound like — what Soundgarden and Rage fans would think. It feels like I've done this so many times that, when it's presented to me as being a departure and as being a new concept, I feel that's a misconception. I feel like that's my theme at this point."

According to Cornell, he wanted to be able to do things differently and learn a completely new style of songwriting. The idea of working with Tim excited him and helped him achieve the goal he's always strived toward: not repeating his past.

"It's the most prolific I've been in such a short period of time, because I was working with someone who does nothing but create music," Cornell explained. "I was told by other people to be prepared. I actually felt like they were concerned that I would be some rock guy who would come in and lag behind, because Tim is a workaholic. I knew that was the right partner to make an album with when I heard that, because I've always been that way and rarely have I been in a position where I worked with somebody else who had that type of focus. And when I listen to this album, it sounds nothing at all to me like other Timbaland productions."

Cornell said Scream is a record that combines various influences that "I don't think have ever been put together before." Working with Timbaland helped shape his lyrics as well, because the "mood of the music is so different from anything I've written, so it brought stories and characters out of me that never really had a voice before."

Before judging, Cornell challenges fans to listen to Scream in its entirety, because the album was designed to be an experience.

"It's a musical journey — like watching a great movie — where you sort of forget about the normal format and get lost in the experience of the album," he said, adding that he's already conceived another album's worth of material during his sessions with Timbaland. "We have a lot more songs than are on this record, and he's already talking about doing more. Every time we sat down to write a song, we'd come up with something we both really liked."

• Chris Cornell
• Timbaland
• Soundgarden
• Audioslave

Chris Cornell
Photo: Getty Images/ Frank Micelotta

Erstwhile Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell will be hitting the road next month with the unlikely collaborator from his forthcoming solo LP — producer du jour Timbaland — for a string of eight live gigs, the first of which is scheduled for October 17 in Denver.

The rocker, who worked with Timbaland on Scream over a six-month period, said the shows will be similar to those he played around the release of his first solo effort, 1999's Euphoria Morning.

"I wanted to get out and do some special shows for fans, where it's just the new record and introducing that live, which isn't really the first time I've done that," he said. "With Euphoria Morning, I played pretty much nothing but my first album for the first tour, and with the first Audioslave record, we toured for a year and did nothing but that record. This is also a very special record."

Cornell will not be playing any tracks from his previous offerings on this brief Verizon Wireless-sponsored West Coast run, which wraps in his hometown of Seattle November 2. Cornell plans on playing the entire LP, from the first note to the last, without any pauses between songs.

"This album, I think, needs to be performed from beginning to end, because on the record, once the music starts, it never stops," he explained. "So it's literally a situation where you start playing the record from the first song, and it's just an hour's worth of music that keeps going until it's done, and it's something that's difficult to present in this day and age. Everything is sound bites and one song at a time, and people sort of downloading one song at a time, and more than any album I've ever made, this is an album that's really designed to be listened to from beginning to end, in one sitting.

"I think the smartest thing for me to do is go out and perform it that way, so people get it, because people haven't really understood that yet," Cornell continued. "I've been talking about it in interviews, and people need to understand that it's a different thing. Musically, definitely, it's a departure, not only for me but maybe for anybody. People are asking me what kind of music it is, and there's no real answer for that."

Cornell's forthcoming disc sounds nothing like his fans might suspect. It mixes elements of hip-hop (compliments of Timbaland) and rock in a rather unique manner.

"The initial conception and perception of this record was mixing two worlds — rock and hip-hop, or beat-based music with fuzzy guitars," Cornell explained. "But it really isn't just that at all. It's a mixture of a lot of different influences."

Timbaland said he's "so excited to be on the road with Verizon and Chris," adding that he "can't wait for everyone to hear [this] great new music."

Over the weekend, Cornell was in Brooklyn, New York, shooting a video for "Ground Zero," a song inspired by the tragic events of September 11.

"To me, it's sort of about the lingering aspect of [9/11] that is used to kind of create support for things that haven't been very good for our country or the citizens of our country," said Cornell, who now resides in Paris. "I've felt like, with the Bush administration, whenever they're in crisis, they'll suddenly pull out a terror alert — a code-orange scenario, which I run into constantly, because I'm in airports so often. They don't ever have to say why, just that it's a matter of national security. And with the conservative right, part of the platform right now in the election is 'Be afraid of terror, be afraid of terrorists. Look at 9/11 — we need an administration and a president who knows how to go out, kick ass, take names and keep us safe.' That's what got us into Iraq in the first place. [That tactic] certainly helped, and I think [9/11 was] a key factor in Bush winning a second term. To me, the song is about how awful 9/11 was, but stresses that we've got to let go of that to move on peacefully."

Chris Cornell/ Timbaland tour dates, according to Cornell's publicist:

» 10/17 - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
» 10/18 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Avalon Theater
» 10/19 - Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
» 10/24 - Las Vegas, NV @ The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
» 10/25 - Los Angeles, CA @ House of Blues
» 10/26 - San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
» 10/31 - San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
» 11/2 - Seattle, WA @ The Showbox

• Chris Cornell
• Timbaland
• Soundgarden
• Audioslave

Timbaland and Chris Cornell
Photo: Frank Micelotta/ WireImage

What would you get if you took one of the most iconic voices in modern hard rock and mixed it with one of the hottest producers of the past decade, known for his thick hip-hop beats and tricky time signatures?

If the singer is leather-lunged former Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell and the knob-twiddler is none other than Timbaland, well, you'd get ... songs that kind of sound like Chris Cornell singing over Timbaland beats. After months of hype and head-scratching among Cornell fans, the first results of the oddball pairing that both artists have said produced the best music of their careers were unveiled Tuesday on Matt Pinfield's radio show on New York's 101.9 FM. . (Take a look at other bizarre cross-genre collaborations in the MTV Newsroom blog.)

Cornell's Scream is due out in the fall, and based on the 30-second snippets of songs he previewed during the show, the results are sure to stir up controversy among the singer's fans. The first single, "Long Gone," opens with laser-effect keyboards over a Coldplay-like piano figure as Cornell's tweaked-out vocals echo in the background and an unmistakable Timbo stutter-step beat bubbles up.

Cornell told Pinfield that it was his brother-in-law Nick, a nightclub owner in Paris, who originally suggested Timbaland might be a good person to remix some songs from Cornell's previous solo album, Carry On. But Cornell said once he approached Tim, the producer wasn't into doing just a few songs — he wanted to make a whole album.

"He was super into that ... and we got into the studio and made a whole album," Cornell said of the LP, which they wrote and recorded in six weeks. "But then we went off in this direction of musically, sort of conceptually tying the whole thing together [so that] it almost harkens back to albums that I listened to when I was a kid, where the music never stops. It's really an album-oriented album."

More than any other album he's made, Cornell said Scream begs to be listened to on headphones all the way through. The title track at first seems like a more traditional Cornell offering, with an ominous, vaguely churchy-sounding buildup of keyboards and glitchy tick-tock rhythms, which again segue into one of Tim's patented funky drum-machine rhythms. Cornell said the theme of the song is about how in relationships, "we get sort of lost in the arguments and the fights about things that could easily just be talked about and ended."

Aside from connecting on a musical level, Cornell said he and Timbaland share an affinity for constantly creating new material, which is why the pair were able to cook up so many songs so quickly. Unlike many of the other producers he's worked with over the years — most of whom he said he ignored — Timbaland struck Cornell as someone who "comes in with actual musical ideas. He's somebody who's also a musical genius and a songwriter and records in very unorthodox ways. ... He's sort of reinventing the way he does things at the same time as working with an artist. You can't compare him to anyone."

Cornell described the tune "Ground Zero" as having a style he's been trying to nail his entire career, with lyrics about trying to stop the people who use the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as an excuse to "do a lot of bad things." Amid handclapping, foot-stomping and Tim's beatboxing, Cornell sings, "When it all falls down/ And the law don't count/ And it don't seem fair/ And the people don't care," in his ragged voice, tinged with some soul-man flair.

The other songs Cornell unwrapped during the appearance were the life-on-the-road tune "Never Far Away," a pure Timbaland classic with a big, fat, Justin-worthy club beat and swirling keyboards that nearly drown out Cornell's silky "whoa, whoa" moans, and "Watch Out," a cowbell-clanging banger that wouldn't be out of place on a Pink or Britney album.

Cornell said the reaction so far from fans has been "really good" and that he feels like they're ready for artists to mix things up. "I just want to have fun with music and do what I'm inspired by and ... if I'm inspired by it, then someone else will be," he said. "If you get into a kind of comfortable corner, where you're doing what you're used to — you're doing what you know how to do — you can get locked in that corner and stuck there and you're done. That's never going to happen to me."

• Audioslave
• Soundgarden
• Timbaland
• Chris Cornell

Sub Pop Executive Vice President Megan Jasper gives MTV News a tour of the label's Seattle offices
Photo: MTV News

On The Record: 20 Years In 20 Records. Or 21. Whatever.

Back in April, Sub Pop Records celebrated either its 20th or 25th anniversary (or maybe its 27th?), depending on who's counting. It was cause for much celebration and even a bit of confusion, and not just because no one seems to be able to agree on just how old the label really is. This is typically Sub Poppian.

Started first as a 'zine in the early '80s, then inching closer to label-tude with the release of a compilation back in 1986, and finally becoming an actual record label (with an office and everything!) in '88, Sub Pop has grown against pretty much all odds, surviving and thriving thanks to a little bit of luck (or a lot), a complete lack of a business plan, and a stated — if jokingly so — goal of "world domination."

There have been boom times and bust times, and just about every single kind of time in between. Sub Pop went from being the "grunge" label — the hottest name in the game — to being the label no one wanted to be associated with in less than six years, and then it nearly went out of business. Then it didn't, and since the dawn of the new millennium (how dramatic!) it's flourished once again, posting gains in a time when most labels are complaining that the sky is falling and the seas are boiling. Times are good in Sub Pop Nation.

And if anyone can appreciate this, it's Megan Jasper. After all, she started as the receptionist at Sub Pop back in 1989. She was there for the good, the bad and the ugly. She's the one responsible for creating the great "grunge speak" hoax that fooled The New York Times back in 1992. She remembers Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell bumming around the SP offices. She also remembers paychecks from the label bouncing during the lean years. She was fired because there was no money to pay her. And she was rehired. Now she's Sub Pop's executive vice president. This, too, is typically Sub Poppian.

This weekend, Jasper and her co-workers will celebrate the label's 20th (that's the official tally) anniversary, with a typically understated affair. They will throw concerts at Seattle's Marymoore Park (and in most of the city, for that matter), where bands old and new will play. The city is posting SP's iconic black-and-white flag atop the Space Needle. Label owner Jonathan Poneman just threw out the first pitch at a Mariners game. World domination does not seem all that inconceivable at this point.

So, to mark this occasion, I flew out to Sub Pop's offices in Seattle to do a news piece and talk to the people who made the label what it is today. While I was there, I marveled not just at the photo booth and the beer machine in the kitchen (cans of Rainier, 75 cents!), but at the warehouse, which was stuffed full of iconic and amazing records that shaped not just my youth, but the fortunes of the label as well.

And Jasper was nice enough to guide me through it all ... stopping in the warehouse to pick out her 20 favorite (and most important) Sub Pop records. (Check out some MTV News staffers' favorites in the Newsroom blog.) We figured it was a good way to showcase the label's impressive back catalog and pay tribute to the acts that have gotten Sub Pop through the past two decades. It was also a good way for me to fatten up my record collection.

Jasper's picks are below, along with my impressions from listening (or, in most cases, relistening) to them all. Also, even though she was supposed to pick 20 albums, Jasper went ahead and picked 21. How typically Sub Poppian of her.

Soundgarden's Screaming Life EP (1987, Sub Pop # 12)

A landmark not just because it's the debut EP from one of grunge's "big four," but also because without Soundgarden, there'd probably be no Sub Pop. Back in '86, Poneman, who was working as a radio DJ, caught a SG show, had some cash and wanted to put out their album. So at the insistence of guitarist Kim Thayil, he approached Bruce Pavitt, who had been releasing cassette tapes and comps as part of his "Subterranean Pop" 'zine. The two joined forces, and with Poneman's $20,000 investment, they started the label. And the rest, as they say, is history. As for the EP itself, well, there's plenty of yowling from frontman Chris Cornell, plus the debut of Thayil's famed "Drop-D" tuning and a recorded sermon from a 1950s preacher that producer Jack Endino found at a Seattle garage sale. Also, according to legend, opening track "Hunted Down" was the song you'd hear when you called the SP offices and were put on hold — meaning hundreds of creditors were kept at bay by the tune's heavy riffage while Pavitt and/or Poneman scrambled to find some cash. The power of proto-grunge at its most practical.

Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff EP (1988, SP #21)

'Honey frontman/maniac Mark Arm basically invented the so-called "Seattle Sound" with his previous band, Green River, but looking for something more (in his words, "a band that actually liked to practice"), he formed Mudhoney and blew everything up once again. Their debut single, "Touch Me I'm Sick," is probably the single greatest grunge anthem of all time (seriously), all fuzzed-out guitars and tape hiss and Arm's way-out wails. And on Superfuzz, they only honed their, ahem, craft. So we get big, lurching numbers like "Mudride" and "No One Has" (the guitars on the latter actually sound like they're drunk on Schmidt Beer, a local favorite based on its potency and, well, its cheapness); the heavy fretting of "In 'N Out of Grace"; and "If I Think," a tune that basically spawned every "let's slow it down for a minute" song for the next decade.

Nirvana's Bleach (1989, SP #34)

Perhaps you've heard of these guys. Taking the murky bludgeon of Mudhoney, stripping away some of Arm's machismo and adding some rather subtle pop flourishes, Nirvana's debut is as self-assured as anything they'd accomplish later, if not a little bit snottier. As the back of the album brags, er, states, Bleach was "recorded in Seattle ... for $600," though you'd never know it from the genuinely pretty "About a Girl" or the gnarly "Negative Creep." Sure, there are moments when Cobain (or, sorry, per the liners he's "Kobain" here) sounds like a bantamweight trying to flex his way out of a fight — like on "Love Buzz" — but there's no denying that there's something in his voice (of course, that could just be hindsight hearing it for me). I'm probably not alone in thinking that, either. With sales of more than 1 million copies, Bleach is not only Sub Pop's biggest seller to date, but also its only release to be certified as platinum.

Thee Headcoats' Heavens to Murgatroyd, Even! It's Thee Headcoats! (Already) (1990, SP #82)

Brit Billy Childish was Jack White back when White was still upholstering chairs and calling himself John Gillis, and this is him at his garage-y finest. With the help of his Headcoats (and his all-girl Headcoatees), he serves up a lightning-quick retroist romp, complete with hissy, temperamental production and pipelined guitars for days (album closer "Rusty Hook" is quite possibly the greatest White Stripes song not written by the White Stripes). The entire album never gets much deeper than lines like "Treat yourself with respect/ Be a Headcoat man," but, hey, that's still plenty sage for me.

Tad's 8 Way Santa (1991, SP #89)

Brutal, bludgeoning stuff from mountain man (and man-mountain) Tad Doyle, a former butcher who tipped scales and dropped jaws back in the early '90s as the frontman/mastermind behind Sub Pop's heaviest act. And Santa is Doyle at the height of his powers, in more ways than one. Taking its name from a type of acid blotter and featuring buzzing odes to meth-stained truckers and drunk driving, it's a big, dumb and dirty album, one made only bigger (and, quite possibly, dumber) thanks to the lawsuit that resulted when the subjects of its original cover — a tube-topped woman and a heavily mustachioed man who had recently become born-again Christians — sued Sub Pop for using their images without their consent. (Doyle claimed he found the photo of the couple at a thrift store.) All copies of the album were forced to be destroyed, and a new cover image — featuring the band standing next to some livestock at a county fair — was used instead. Re-reading this paragraph again, it's obvious to me that Tad was way more awesome than I remember.

Mark Lanegan's Whiskey for the Holy Ghost (1993, SP #132)

His first solo record (1990's The Winding Sheet) featured Cobain on backing vocals, and his full-time band (Screaming Trees) was one of Seattle's finest, but it's this, his second solo effort, that showcases Lanegan at his best. Recorded over a three-year period (sessions were so grinding that at one point, Lanegan nearly tossed the masters into a nearby lake), Whiskey is an intense listen, filled with beautifully sinister, nocturnal music. Songs like "Kingdoms of Rain" and "Beggar's Blues" echo with churchly organs and somber cellos, while Lanegan's voice pours over it all like Dewar's over ice. Genuinely beautiful stuff and an album that foreshadows the latter part of Lanegan's career, working alongside the likes of Josh Homme and Isobel Campbell.

The Vaselines' The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History (1992, SP #145)

Seriously screwy, supremely screwed-up indie pop from a pair of clever Scots. Formed on a whim, the Vaselines — Eugene Kelley and Frances McKee — released a pair of EPs and one full-length in the late '80s (all of which is collected here) then split up for no apparent reason to do nothing in particular. Cobain was a huge fan of their skewered work, covering a pair of songs ("Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun") on Nirvana's odds-n-sods collection Incesticide, and then — more famously, perhaps — during the band's "Unplugged" performance (doing "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam"). A gleefully warped record, one that only seems to be about three things: sex, bicycles and Jesus. Oh, and drugs too.

Sebadoh's Bakesale (1994, SP #260)

An honest-to-goodness indie-rock classic, Bakesale is full of heart-stopping (or, alternately, heart-breaking) songs of doubt, fear and loathing — both of yourself and your fellow man. Masterminds Lou Barlow and Jason Lowenstein are in top form throughout, from the beautiful "Dreams" and the Slint-y "Sh-- Soup" to the jangly "Give Up" and the classic "Rebound." And it's not as wussy as you might expect — OK, it sort of is, but at least the guitars sound plenty heavy.

Sunny Day Real Estate's LP2 (1995, SP #316)

By now, you probably know the drama surrounding this one — mercurial frontman discovers religion, breaks up the band before album is released, leaving other members high and dry (or in the Foo Fighters) — and all that you've heard about LP2 is correct. But also consider that it's a colossal achievement, one that positively redefined stop/start (and loud/quiet) rock and paved the way for a new musical movement a decade later. Over the course of nine songs, guitarist Dan Hoerner arpeggiates and creates walls of crisp, clean sound, while the rhythm section of Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith chug and prod each other along. And frontman Jeremy Enigk's eerie voice weaves through the din like a serpent ducking into holes. Songs like "8" and "Iscarabaid" are both epic and minute, macro-detailed and wide-angle huge. "8" gets positively stratospheric thanks to Hoerner and Enigk's interplay, and "5/4" rocks harder than any song about Jesus should be allowed to.

The Spinanes' Arches + Aisles (1998, SP #417)

For all the electronic bleep-bloop, spy-movie guitars and bossa-nova beats contained therein (truly, producer John McEntire's tech-y touch is all over this one), Arches is, at its core, a singer/songwriter album, one featuring the razor-sharp lyrics of frontwoman Rebecca Gates (OK, so it also sounds like a Stereolab side project). Witness her deft observations on tunes like "72-74," where she plots revenge with a Mont Blanc pen on "your mustachioed mad man," or "Love, the Laizee," which laments the "seersucker pressure" of a former lover.

The Murder City Devils' In Name and Blood (2000, SP #497)

Ah, the lean years ... when records like this were tossed out by the floundering label with the hope of latching on to something — anything. The Devils' third album is like a pulp crime novel brought to screaming life — booze, sex, ashtrays overflowing with butts galore. And then there are the liner notes, which feature gory and detailed crime-scene photos of the bandmembers' rather unique demises (hanging, blunt trauma, "abdominal goring with a broken bottle"). Plus, a cover of Neil Diamond's "I'll Come Running." If this record were released today, there is at least a 50 percent chance these guys would be Hot Topic godheads.

The Shins' Oh, Inverted World (2001, SP #550)

Oh, enhanced cash flow. James Mercer and his band of merry retroists ambled in from the desert surrounding Albuquerque, New Mexico, with an armload of sunny, amiable jangle-pop (the kind of stuff brooding 25-year-old sitcom-stars-turned-writer/directors just love) and Sub Pop found new — not to mention profitable — life. Of course, you know "New Slang," but there's plenty of gold here ("Weird Divide," "Know Your Onion!") and songs like "Your Algebra" and "The Past and Pending" (you know, the ones after "Slang" that you never listen to) only hint at the more nocturnal territory the band covered on last year's Wincing the Night Away.

The Postal Service's Give Up (2003, SP #595)

By everyone at Sub Pop's admission, this one just sort of fell into their laps, and some 900,000 copies later, it's the second biggest-selling album in the label's history. And no one seems to be able to figure out why.Intended as nothing more than a one-off collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard and producer Jimmy Tamborello, Give Up has instead taken on a life of its own, and while it's difficult to listen to a song like "Such Great Heights" these days and not think of an ad for UPS, that doesn't mean there aren't some genuinely great moments on the album. Like when "Such Great Heights" bursts open with flourishes of mini-orchestras, or the split-second break in "We Will Become Silhouettes" or even closer "Natural Anthem," where everything comes unraveled in five short minutes. If anything, the album is really a testament to the skill of Tamborello, because if there's a vocal effect, drum pattern, synth flutter or low-end frequency he doesn't use on Give Up, I haven't heard it.

Iron + Wine's The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002, SP #600)

Sleepy lo-fi folk made by a bearded dude from Miami. If there's any indication of just how much Sub Pop has changed over the course of 20 years, this is it. The debut disc from the majestically hirsute Sam Beard, Creek came out of nowhere to earn near-universal acclaim. And it's not difficult to see why. Full of twinkly banjo ("Promising Light") and rusty slide guitar ("Faded From the Winter"), it's a remarkably accomplished introduction to the world. Full of scratches and pops, the screeches of fingers on frets and hushed lyrics, Creek is just as warm as I can presume Beam's beard gets during those balmy South Beach summers.

Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005, SP #655)

From the opening claptrap of "You Are a Runner, I Am My Father's Son" (herky-jerky piano, crashing cymbals, Spencer Krug's bizarro falsetto), it's clear Wolf Parade are zooming toward something — you're just not quite sure what. And while the voyage is nice — "Modern World," "Grounds for Divorce" and "Shine a Light" are all pleasant diversions — you know when you've arrived: with the blaring synth notes and pounding drums of "I'll Believe in Anything," a song that builds and crashes over and over again, creating great peaks of cymbal crashes and huge waterfalls of guitars. It's glorious, like 10 vistas or a dozen mountain ranges. And then, it's over, and the rest of the trip is kind of a bummer. But still, dude, that view from the top!

Love as Laughter's Laughter's Fifth (2005, SP #659)

LAL mastermind Sam Jayne has made a rather amazing anti-career out of not really trying all that hard, first as a guest on Beck's One Foot in the Grave album, then on a pair of K Records releases of his own. And that, uh, talent is on ample display here. There's an awful lot of wide-eyed, delightfully scruffy stuff here, from the opening track "In Amber," which sounds like a Heartbreakers' B-side and features a line about the Pauly Shore flick "Encino Man," and the truly excellent "Corona Extra," a lover's lament that boasts gently plucked acoustic guitar and a cheesy "crashing tide" sound effect. Effort is overrated anyway.

Sleater-Kinney's The Woods (2005, SP #670)

The final chapter in the career of one of America's finest bands, The Woods represents Sleater-Kinney at the brink. Recorded in the dead of winter at Dave Fridmann's Upstate New York studio, it's an album of quiet claustrophobia and less-than-quiet rage. They sound crazy and pissed off at their surroundings and each other, which is why we get feedback heavy freak-outs like "Wilderness" and the raging, 11-minute "Let's Call It Love." That S-K decided to call it quits after the album's release was probably pure coincidence, but it certainly casts a deathly pallor over the record now — like hearing a star collapse into itself, only with more distortion.

Band of Horses' Everything All the Time (2006, SP #690)

Strummy, spacey, sepia-tinged indie rock to purchase SUVs to (or "crossovers" or whatever they're called). South Carolina-bred Ben Bridwell does his roots proud, and there's a homespun warmth to everything on the record. "The Funeral" put them on the map, but it's far from the only great tune here — "Wicked Gil" is a stomper, "The Great Salt Lake" is a My Morning Jacket castoff and "Weed Party" is awesome because it sounds like the kind of song you'd make after attending a weed party.

Pissed Jeans' Hope for Men (2007, SP #730)

Squealing, abrasive, unapologetic noise punk from the pride of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Frontman Matt Korvette yowls his throat out on tracks like the sludgy "People Person" and the thrashing "Secret Admirer," plus there's odes to scrapbooking (that sound like they're being sung by the devil), ice cream and yuppies who play fantasy football. These guys are the future — or just the unruly bastard children of Mark Arm.

Flight of the Conchords' Flight of the Conchords (2008, SP #715)

Faux French new-wave ballads, goofy synth-pop songs, tired "lover-man" tunes aplenty — ladies and gentlemen, the full-length debut from the Grammy-winning comedy duo Flight of the Conchords! I am not the best person to write about this one, as I detest "funny" music (my favorite track here is probably "Au Revoir," since it's only 21 seconds long), so let's just move on, shall we?

The Gutter Twins' Saturnalia (2008, SP #761)

An album more than three years in the making, full of morose and melodramatic ruminations on life, death and the afterlife, by Lanegan and former Afghan Whigs lothario Greg Dulli. If you like the dark and desperate places the Whigs (who, I'm just now noticing, are strangely missing from this list) went, or the windswept desolation of Lanegan's stuff, well, then you probably already own this one. Songs like "Idle Hands" and "Circle the Fringes" are somber, eerie affairs, while album-closer "Front Street" is gorgeous, desperate and swooning. Basically, there are about 1 million emotions going on here ... none of them rosy. But what else would you expect from the Twins?

Questions? Concerns? Platinum plaques? Send 'em to me at BTTS@MTVStaff.com.

• Welcome To Sub Pop!

• Nirvana
• Soundgarden
• The Postal Service
• Iron & Wine
• The Vaselines

Chris Cornell
Photo: David Livingston/ Getty Images

According to Chris Cornell, fans should expect a few surprises from his second solo studio LP when it lands in stores in March — like, say, his cover of Michael Jackson's 1982 hit "Billie Jean."

"I didn't plan on it," he said with a chuckle. "It just sort of happened organically. I changed the music quite a bit, I didn't touch the lyrics. And it's not a joke. I took a completely different approach to it, musically. It's like when Johnny Cash did [the Soundgarden song] 'Rusty Cage,' " on Cash's 1996 LP Unchained, "and people started calling me and leaving messages saying, 'I heard the Johnny Cash version and the lyrics are really, really great.' No one ever told me that before. Ever. Not once. This is kind of like that. It does that to this song, because it's really an emotional song.

"The lyrical content is kind of panicky, because — well, it's a pretty bad thing, someone coming and lying to you, saying you're the father of their kid and you're not."

Cornell, who has played the cover during live gigs in Europe, said the track has to be heard to be believed. But in truth, the cover is rather apropos. The lyrics the Audioslave frontman wrote for the 12 cuts on the follow-up to 1999's Euphoria Morning deal with all kinds of relationships (see "Chris Cornell Working On Solo LP — But Dismisses Rumors Of Audioslave Split").

The rocker, who began recording the LP four weeks ago and is just about finished with it, said one song — "She'll Never Be Your Man" — tells the story of a guy "whose woman leaves him for another woman, which is sort of hard to deal with because men know how to compete with other men for something like a woman and a relationship."

Not that Cornell's speaking from experience. "I know a couple of different people who were married and their wives left them for women," he explained. "It's like a special kind of weird dis, in a way. It's never happened to me, but just in thinking about it and hearing stories about it, it's like, 'Maybe I was so bad, not only did she dump me, she gave up men entirely?' "

There's also "Arms Around Your Love," which is about "a guy whose girl leaves him for another guy, but she didn't really want to — it was just that he was such a loser," Cornell said. "And now, this guy's got to deal with seeing her around with someone else. That song should really be called 'You're an Idiot.' Maybe it will be when it ends up on the record."

The album, which Cornell said has its "gospel and R&B" moments, will also feature the tune "Disappearing Act," an acoustic version of which appears in the upcoming movie "Bug," directed by William Friedkin ("The Exorcist") and starring Ashley Judd. The album cut is going to be a plugged-in rendition, while the film version was recorded in Cornell's living room.

In fact, Cornell revealed it was writing "Disappearing Act" and "You Know My Name," the theme from the upcoming James Bond film "Casino Royale," that inspired him to release a second solo LP. The songs are also part of the reason why Audioslave — who issued their third album, Revelations, two months ago — won't be touring anytime soon (see "New Audioslave LP: 'Led Zeppelin Meets Earth, Wind & Fire' ").

"I started working on songs for the James Bond film and that song for 'Bug,' and I started writing more and more and more, and decided that I was going to make another record, right away," he said. "I had a lot of song ideas I wanted to work on, and I kind of want to get back to making my own records and touring for a while. But I mean, we made three records in four and a half years. Three of the four of us have had children since we became a band. We don't have any touring plans at all.

"I like the idea of making some music," he continued. "This coming year will be the 20th anniversary of me being a recording artist, so I am looking forward to the idea of putting out another record and going out, doing my own tour and playing everything from my entire history. There's a lot there. It's actually staggering when I think about it."

• Chris Cornell
• Audioslave
• Soundgarden

Chris Cornell
Photo: MTV News

Chris Cornell doesn't know how these rumors get started.

On Tuesday, a trade magazine reported that Audioslave's forthcoming, Brendan O'Brien-produced album Revelations would be the singer's last with the band, as he has been working on material for his first solo album in more than seven years. The report, which helped to further fuel rumors that began circulating online three weeks ago, suggested Cornell would like to focus all his attention on the yet-untitled follow-up to 1999's Euphoria Morning.

Oh, and according to the same report, the rest of Audioslave — bassist Tim Commerford, drummer Brad Wilk and guitarist Tom Morello — turned down a seven-figure offer from some concert promoter to reunite Rage Against the Machine with former frontman Zack de la Rocha.

Now, while Cornell has written about a dozen tunes for a solo LP he intends to record before summer's end, he said Tuesday that everything in Audioslave's universe is just peachy. And later that same afternoon, in an e-mail, Morello confirmed that, "a while back," the members of the now-defunct Rage did turn down just such an offer, which was to reunite for a single concert. Morello, too, said the breakup rumors are rubbish.

"We hear rumors that Audioslave is breaking up all the time," Cornell explained. "Even in the beginning, when we were having business problems, and we weren't necessarily going to be a band, we were still going to put out a record. We made a record and we loved it. I think that's where it starts — the idea that we sort of started on shaky ground. You would hope that by now, putting out our third record, people wouldn't be thinking that way or be worried about it. But it comes up. I always just ignore it."

What Cornell didn't ignore was an offer from the producers of the forthcoming James Bond film "Casino Royale" to pen the movie's theme song. But he admits that, at first, he wasn't so sure it was a gig he wanted.

"I wasn't really sure about doing a Bond theme, because I wasn't really a big fan of the last several movies," he said. "And then I heard that there was going to be a new guy — Daniel Craig — who was going to play Bond (see "British Actor Daniel Craig Steps Into James Bond's Tux"). And he's so different. I have seen him in several movies, and I was kind of intrigued. So I went to Prague, where they were shooting the movie, and they showed me a rough edit of it. I was just completely blown away by it, because it's unlike any Bond film ever, really. [Craig] is an actor's actor, and there's emotional content to [the movie]. He's not like the swaggering, winking sort of super-agent guy. He's like a human being in this movie, and it's going to completely readjust the way people think of the character."

Cornell co-wrote the theme track, "You Know My Name," with David Arnold, who's scoring the music for "Casino Royale," his fourth Bond film.

Since March, when Audioslave wrapped the recording and mixing sessions for Revelations (a process that took all of five weeks), Cornell's had a lot of spare time on his hands (see "New Audioslave LP: 'Led Zeppelin Meets Earth, Wind & Fire' ").

"And I spent that time writing," he said. "There are a couple of songs that I'd written over the last year and a half. And the rest of [the solo LP] has been in the last couple of months. I do it more or less for fun — it's kind of like my hobby. I have a lot of songs now that, I mean, some of them probably could be Audioslave songs, but as a whole, with that many songs that are completely different than anything we've been doing as Audioslave, I just decided it was time to do another record."

Cornell said the LP will be more or less an acoustic effort and "not so much straight-up guitar, bass, drums and vocals — just kind of layerings of acoustic guitar and sounds." He said Audioslave have no immediate plans to hit the road, despite the fact that Revelations is slated for release September 5. But he does "want to go play solo shows," promising that "it will happen — I will fit it in."

The singer's solo material has benefited tremendously from his work with Audioslave, he said. "It's helped me approach songwriting with more of a fearlessness, and less, like, constant thought and intellectual input into what it means," Cornell said. "We don't question an idea until it's a completely finished song and we've recorded it. We almost treat our songs like human beings, and each one has as much of a right to exist as the next one. What that's done for me and the band is keep the creative process very open and not daunting and intimidating. There's been more of a freedom and playfulness in writing the songs, and rarely have we scrapped a song because, at the end of the day, we don't like it."

Audioslave plan on recording and releasing as much new material as possible in the future, because, as Cornell says O'Brien once told him, "[we] can — not to make a lot of money, but because not every band can show up once a year with an album, or material for it." "The reason why the third album has come out so fast is because, with the writing for the second record [last year's Out of Exile], we had to cut it down to a reasonable amount of songs and we were cutting out songs we loved just as much as anything that made the record. We went out on tour, and it was obvious right away that it would be nice to cut out the cycle of a year and a half of touring, a year of writing and recording, and have it be so spaced out so sometimes it's a year since you've written a song or been in the studio. We didn't need to go back and write enough songs for an entire new record, because we had so many — we still ended up writing another 10 songs. We ended up re-recording some of the ones we'd written for Out of Exile, too."

Cornell was moved to write one song on the new album, "Wide Awake," after watching the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, he said.

"We were on tour at the time that the aftermath footage started to be shown on CNN, which tends to be a 45-minute loop of the most horrible things that they can show you, and then you see it all day long, over and over," he said. "I had written the melody to that song and we recorded it, with no lyrics really. I just started seeing those images, and knew I wanted to write something. The subject was not obviously to teach anybody about anything, or change anyone's mind. I don't think it's a controversial song, and I don't think anyone's going to disagree with the content of the song at all. It will stand as a reminder, when people listen to this record — next year, five years from now, 10 years from now — that that happened, and be reminded of the victims, both dead and living. When they hear the song, they should be reminded that the disaster's still there, that it's not repaired already. The fear that I have is that it will get forgotten, and as soon as it does, it has the potential to happen again, and obviously has the potential to happen again there."

The lyrics to several of the songs on Revelations, including "The Shape of Things to Come" and "Sound of a Gun," were inspired by Cornell's inherent desire to shield his offspring from the world's dangers.

"[These songs] reflect me being a father and a family man now at this point in my life and having a rekindled anxiety, but with new facets to it," he said. "Rather than just worry about my own future and my own mortality, the future and mortality of my children, and the feelings I've had lately with the state of the world remind me of the Cold War feelings I had as a teenager. Like so many young Americans, I felt a lot of helplessness, and to a degree, a sense that the world could end at any time. I think a lot of the angst in punk music came from that tension that just wouldn't go away.

"I feel those feelings now again," he continued. "Having a wife and children that I see every day, and wanting these children to have a shot at a happy life and a future. ... I just have a sense of helplessness, and that anxiousness shows up in a number of songs. They're about sort of, 'What's the state of the world and why.' And I don't like it."

• Soundgarden: Where Ya Been?

• Chris Cornell
• Audioslave
• Soundgarden

Soundgarden's Chris Cornell in 1996
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

We couldn't get enough of them. Their songs were our soundtrack, and we laughed, danced, cried and loved along with them. They flashed across our radio and TV burning brightly ... but where have they been lately? As you'll find out in this regular feature, sometimes the stories behind your favorite songs are more interesting than the hits themselves.

Bust out the flannel, three-quarter thermal underwear and Doc Martens, because it's time to look back at the 15th anniversary of the grunge explosion. Though for a time it felt like the buzzed-out, grimy sound would never fade away, the only prominent group that survived the genre's rapid rise and fall intact are Pearl Jam, who recoiled from their initial fame so far that it might just have saved their career ... and, given the list of casualties, even their lives.

Less fortunate were grunge godheads Nirvana, whose meteoric rise to fame was cut short in 1994 with troubled singer Kurt Cobain's suicide, and Alice in Chains, whose frontman, Layne Staley, died of a drug overdose in 2002. After stints with Sweet 75 and Eyes Adrift, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic has retired from music and has taken up the soft-rockin' subject of election reform these days, and of course drummer Dave Grohl has enjoyed more than a decade of success with the Foo Fighters. As for Alice, after main songwriter Jerry Cantrell released two solo albums, AIC reunited for a 2005 show with guest singers, and this year for a U.S. tour with Comes With the Fall vocalist William DuVall (see "Layne Staley Died From Mix Of Heroin, Cocaine, Report Says" and "Alice In Chains Wrap Up String Of U.S. Club Dates In New York"). However, other grunge vets have strayed farther off the radar.

Who: Mudhoney

Biggest hit: "Touch Me, I'm Sick"

Why do I know that name?: Mudhoney helped start grunge and earned tons of respect and admiration from their peers, but came up notably short on large-scale commercial success. The band's explosive and often messy mix of punk and garage rock originated with singer Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner in the mid-1980s, when both were in a band called Green River with future Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard. After Arm and Turner hooked up with former Bundle of Hiss drummer Dan Peters and ex-Melvins bassist Matt Lukin, they formed Mudhoney, releasing their first Sub Pop single in 1988, which featured their signature song, "Touch Me, I'm Sick." The band signed to Reprise in 1991 and released its major-label debut, Piece of Cake, the next year. The group released two more Reprise albums before being dropped.

What now?: Lukin split after the band's 1999 tour, and it seemed like the group was history. But the band reformed in 2001 for some U.S. dates with former Steel Wool bassist Steve Dukich replacing Lukin. After Guy Maddison came on board as a full-time bassist later that year, Mudhoney returned to Sub Pop and have since released a pair of acclaimed albums, Since We've Become Translucent and this year's Under a Billion Suns.

Who: Screaming Trees

Biggest hit: "Nearly Lost You"

Why do I know that name?: Though Screaming Trees beat most of their contemporaries in signing to a major label (after stints on indie stalwarts SST and Sub Pop), the group had a less successful go at the big time due to its long-running internal struggles. Formed in the mid-1980s by brothers Van (bass) and Gary Lee Conner (guitar) and brooding singer Mark Lanegan, the band finally hit in 1992 with its album Sweet Oblivion, which featured the swaying hit "Nearly Lost You" — a highlight of "Singles," Cameron Crowe's 1992 grunge time capsule — and the dark ballad "Dollar Bill."

What now?: The Trees officially broke up in 2000 after a concert to celebrate the opening of Seattle's Experience Music Project museum, and it seems unlikely they'll reunite. Lanegan, who recorded several solo albums during and after the group's run, worked extensively with Queens of the Stone Age but has since left that band. He followed with the formation of the Mark Lanegan Band, which issued an EP and an album, Bubblegum, featuring guest spots from PJ Harvey, Josh Homme and former Guns N' Roses members Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin. He also released a well-reviewed collaboration with ex-Belle and Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell called Battle of the Broken Seas. Drummer Barrett Martin (formerly of grunge forebearers Skin Yard) continues to record with the cinematic instrumental band Tuatara, featuring R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, as well as playing on albums by the Minus 5, Therapy?, blues singer Cedell Davis, Queens of the Stone Age and Victoria Williams. He is also pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology at the University of New Mexico as part of his ongoing study of world music. He released his first solo album, The Painted Desert, in 2004. The battling Conner brothers have gone their own ways, with Van playing in the group Valis with the non-ST Conner brother, Pat, as well as the old-school grunge act Musk Ox. Gary Lee has recently relaunched the Web site for his psych-garage band the Purple Outside.

Who: Soundgarden

Biggest hit: "Black Hole Sun"

Why do I know that name?: More metal than straight-up grunge, Soundgarden were the workhorses of the movement — the Led Zeppelin to Nirvana's Beatles. Mixing psychedelic rock with pounding riffs and singer Chris Cornell's glass-shattering wails, the band started out on Sub Pop and quickly progressed to a major-label deal and a string of hit albums such as Superunknown and Down on the Upside. The band broke up in 1997.

"Marvelous 3 Now Down To One, SWV End 10 Years Of Resting Their Voices" "Sammie Graduating To Comeback, Third Eye Blind Can See Clearly Now" "Vitamin C Juicing Up A Comeback, Fastball Heading Back To The Mound" "Dream Wake Up, 'Sex' Burns Marcy Playground" "Willa Ford Strips Down, Jesse Camp Drops Out" Related Artists Soundgarden Screaming Trees Mudhoney ]]> http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1536484/20060717/soundgarden.jhtml News Article http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1536484/20060717/soundgarden.jhtml 18 Jul 2006 06:00:00 EDT Tupac Shakur Photo: MTV News By this time in 1996, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur had practically made full-time careers out of trying to stay out of jail. Shakur failed on that front and was about to head back to the slammer for four months, as he skipped out on doing road clean-up work for a parole violation. He and Snoop managed to keep it together enough to shoot a video, though, for their duet track "2 of Americaz Most Wanted." "When I wrote it I was so happy that Pac was out of jail. I wanted to let people know I was thinking about my [murder] case and I was thinking about him as well," Snoop said. "Because if they take me away, they've gotta let him go. You can take one of us, but you can't take us both, and if you let us both go, that's when you really did f---ed up." With a new movie division and East Coast office in New York, plus a restaurant on the drawing board, Snoop and Tupac's label, Death Row Records, was spreading its wings, and Shakur said the rappers were ready. "There's not two more confident individuals in this business than myself and Snoop," Shakur said. "When people go back to see what we was living like in 1996 and what was going on and how did we feel ... I am betting my life and Dogg's betting his life that it's gonna be our stories that they're listening to. I can guarantee it." Soundgarden were preparing to return to the racks with their LP Down on the Upside, and this week in 1996 they shot the video for the album's first single, "Pretty Noose." MTV News' Tabitha Soren talked to Seattle's dour sons on the set. Soren: So what is a pretty noose? Chris Cornell (vocals): It's just sort of an attractively packaged bad idea. Something that seems great at first but comes back to bite you. As it turned out, bassist Ben Shepherd had real firsthand noose experience. Soren: As a kid you sat around tying nooses? Shepherd: Yeah. We also had like a sailor's book at home. We used to sit around and tie a whole bunch of different knots. Soren: That doesn't sound quite as morbid. Cornell: So what are you saying? You didn't sit around and tie little nooses and hang your Barbie off a light shade? With Down on the Upside carrying such songs as "Pretty Noose," "Zero Change" and "Blow Up the Outside World," it seemed the upcoming album promised to be pretty dark, which was of course the case. Kim Thayil (guitarist): It's a little bit sad. It's a little bit creepy. What's new?  Cornell: If you write a song about feeling bad in a particular way, and then somebody hears that song and they think, "Wow, I really identify with the way you felt when you wrote this," or "If there's somebody else out there that feels like me, I'm not the only one," what happens? They feel better. So even if it's a dark theme, it could actually have a positive effect. This week in Atlanta, the members of TLC began their week in Federal Bankruptcy Court. The group's T-Boz said it still hadn't seen any money from the multiplatinum album CrazySexyCool. TLC's label said the trio were using the bankruptcy claims to renegotiate or get out of their long-term recording contract. For more "This Week In ...", check out the This Week In Archive >> Related Artists Tupac Snoop Dogg Soundgarden TLC ]]> http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1453337/20020409/2pac.jhtml News Article http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1453337/20020409/2pac.jhtml 9 Apr 2002 05:02:02 EDT Related Artists Sheryl Crow Soundgarden ]]> http://www.mtv.com/bands/g/news_feature_grammyflashback/1995/ News Article http://www.mtv.com/bands/g/news_feature_grammyflashback/1995/ 19 Feb 2002 01:10:36 EST Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun Black Hole Sun Artist: Soundgarden Label: A&M Records Director: Howard Greenhalgh Album: Superunknown ]]> Videos http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=318355 http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=318355 14 Apr 2005 12:00:00 EDT Soundgarden - Blow Up The Outside World Blow Up The Outside World Artist: Soundgarden Label: A&M Records Director: Gerald V.Casale Album: Down on the Upside ]]> Videos http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=10070 http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=10070 21 May 1996 12:00:00 EDT Soundgarden - Burden In My Hand Burden In My Hand Artist: Soundgarden Label: A&M Records Director: Jake Scott Album: Down on the Upside ]]> Videos http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=10068 http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=10068 21 May 1996 12:00:00 EDT Soundgarden - Pretty Noose (Henry Shepherd Version) Pretty Noose (Henry Shepherd Version) Artist: Soundgarden Label: A&M Records Director: Henry Shepherd Album: Down on the Upside ]]> Videos http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=10066 http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=10066 21 May 1996 12:00:00 EDT Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun Black Hole Sun Artist: Soundgarden Label: A&M Records Director: n/a Album: Superunknown ]]> Videos http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=306853 http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=306853 8 Mar 1994 12:00:00 EST Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun Black Hole Sun Artist: Soundgarden Label: A&M Records Director: Howard Greenhalgh Album: Superunknown ]]> Videos http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=45124 http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1019&vid=45124 8 Mar 1994 12:00:00 EST Soundgarden: Where Ya Been? Related Artists Soundgarden Chris Cornell Audioslave ]]> Photos http://www.mtv.com/photos/?fid=1536479 http://www.mtv.com/photos/?fid=1536479 17 Jul 2006 12:00:00 EDT Lollapalooza: Through the Years Retrospective Related Artists Pearl Jam Red Hot Chili Peppers Rage Against the Machine Tool Alice in Chains ]]> Photos http://www.mtv.com/photos/?fid=1523120 http://www.mtv.com/photos/?fid=1523120 3 Feb 2006 12:00:00 EST