Blow Up The Outside World

Don't we all want to blow up the outside world (metaphorically) from time to time? Written entirely by lead singer Chris Cornell, this song finds him wishing he could retreat from the people and pressures of everyday life. His songs could be very dark, but he ascribed to the theory that sad songs can make you feel better - kind of like horror movies.

This song was written differently than most of Soundgarden's previous work. Instead of building off riffs, which was usually their strategy, Chris Cornell built this song with vocal melodies as the foundation. "Chris went that direction of singer/songwriter guy," guitarist Kim Thayil told us. "And the band was more accepting because of the success of singer/songwriting stuff as opposed to more guitar oriented rock."

Jerry Casale directed the video. He was a founding member of Devo, a band that was making innovative videos years before MTV went on the air. He directed all Devo's videos, and has worked on videos for many other artists. In our interview with Casale, he talked about working on the clip: "I directed the epic video, the last video they made before they broke up. Everybody had their own dressing rooms and only came out for the takes and then disappeared back in their dressing rooms. They were very professional - when they would come on the set, they were ready to do what they were supposed to do, but it was all business. I only found out during the shoot what was really going on with them, I had no idea they were about to break up until we were in the middle of this 3-day shoot of this epic 5-minute-and-20-second song that was a very depressing song. I guess it was Chris' final statement about how he was feeling. It certainly left you with a depressed energy after you heard it."