In an MTV News interview, Chris Cornell said of this song: "It's a bunch of references to people that I knew that were younger than me who've been dead for years and years, up to a couple of years ago. And then just kind of that juxtaposition of, even though it seems a lot for one person, a young healthy person, to have lost all these friends through various means of stupidity and other things, then making reference to the Vietnam War Memorial and the sheer numbers of dead. And remembering that and pointing out that each one of them has a family, each one of them has friends that are sitting around thinking about the same stuff that I did. But the numbers are astounding and, in a sense, kind of criminal. And that's what the song's about."
The bridge where Cornell sings, "I've seen 50,000 names all engraved on a stone" is a reference to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
The music video for this song was shot during the band's stay in Cuba. They were the first American band to ever play a live show in the Communist nation of Cuba.
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