1994Released
5:18

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Black Hole Sun. By Songfacts®.

The band is named after a sculpture in Seattle called "Soundgarden," and longtime speculation was that this song got its name from another Seattle sculpture called "Black Sun" by the artist Isamu Noguchi. (The piece is located in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. It looks kind of like a huge, black doughnut and is aimed so you can see the Space Needle through the middle of it.) Chris Cornell stated in a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly that the title came from something he heard on the news - he thought the anchor said "black hole sun," but he really was saying something else. Cornell started thinking about the phrase and decided to write a song around it, as he felt it was a thought-provoking title. He wrote the lyrics first, then composed the music based on the images he came up with.

This song was written entirely by Chris Cornell. "If I write lyrics that are bleak or dark, it usually makes me feel better," the Soundgarden frontman said. This song is certainly bleak, with references to snakes, a dead sky, and the summer stench. It's one of the more morose songs to get consistent airplay, and it helped associate the grunge sound with depression and angst. Cornell, however, was simply expressing some dark thoughts in song - he was not suffering or crying for help in the manner of Kurt Cobain.

In a Songfacts interview with Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, he said of this song: "We'd had singles before. But that was easily our biggest hit. That was more singer/songwriterish. Chris went that direction of singer/songwriter guy, and the band was more accepting because of the success of singer/songwriting stuff as opposed to more guitar oriented rock. It was more vocal accompaniment rock, some guitar. So we started utilizing a little bit more of that."

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Black Hole Sun.
F♯Key
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
106BPM

Album

The album Black Hole Sun is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Black Hole Sun.
Universal Music Group
© 2014 A&M Records
℗ 2014 A&M Records

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