Spoonman

This song is about a street artist named Artis the Spoonman, who played the spoons on the streets of Seattle, where Soundgarden formed. Artis played his spoons on the song, and is credited on the album (Spoons: Artis The Spoonman). He is also featured in the video. When Songfacts spoke with Artis in 2013, he said he earned a flat fee of $1,000 for performing on the song, and another $7,000 to appear in the video. Describing how Soundgarden contacted him, he said: "In 1992, they had me do a tweener [a performance between acts] between them and Melvins. And their manager at the time, Susan Silver, she told me Chris [Cornell] is writing a song, 'Spoonman,' and would I like to record on it when it's done. And so in '93, almost a year and a half later, they called me and we went in the studio that day and recorded it. Went through four takes and that was that. Two hours. That was the recording session."

Pearl Jam bass player Jeff Ament came up with the title. Along with Eddie Vedder, Layne Staley and various other grunge forebears, he was in the 1992 movie Singles, which stars Matt Dillon as a musician named Cliff Poncier. A prop in the film is Poncier's solo tape; Ament contrived the song titles, one of which was "Spoon Man." (At the time, Cornell was in the group Temple Of The Dog ("Hunger Strike") with Ament and Stone Gossard, who went on to form Pearl Jam.) When Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell, who also appears in the film, saw the tape, he recorded actual songs with those titles just for fun. The 5-song recording was pressed to about 5000 CDs which were used to promote the film. This original version of the song was recorded on a 4-track tape to emulate how Poncier would have done it. It's very raw. When it came time to record Superunknown, Cornell made a polished version with Soundgarden, this time as "Spoonman." Ament is credited on the album for coming up with the title. Cornell had yet to meet Artis when he wrote the song.

This won the 1995 Grammy for Best Metal Performance.