Soundgarden's mainstream breakthrough served as a personal eye- (and ear-) opener, allowing me to appreciate a sound that defined the 90s.
I don't know why, but I'd always had a hard time getting into grunge. Sure, plenty of songs from the era have endured — and don't get me started on how overplayed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is — but I just hadn't ever connected with the sound. More than anything, it probably had to do with a lack of exposure. The 90s are easily my weak spot when it comes to musical knowledge, so it makes sense that it takes me longer than usual to come around to styles that were popular then.
When I did finally start to appreciate grunge, I did so because I found a particular gateway song in Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." It's one of the style's biggest hits, but it's far from exclusively being a grunge song; rather, it is permeated from its onset by a psychedelic flavor that calls back to the 60s and 70s. The heavier, distorted guitars are there in the choruses, but they never overwhelm the track. All in all, it makes for a song that marries the grit of grunge with the warmth of other alternative strands of rock.
The late, great Chris Cornell may have been sonically looking backwards when he and Kim Thayil recorded the latter's lead guitar parts for "Black Hole Sun" — employing a Leslie speaker yielded a sound reminiscent of the speaker's effect on the Beach Boys' Hammond organ on "Good Vibrations." However, the track as a whole is quite forward-looking for Soundgarden and other grunge acts. In introducing spots of brightness to grunge's trademark slugdy, dark style, they gave the track a sound primed for mainstream success, making it more palatable to many who had previously steered away from it (admittedly, decades later, myself included). With the benefit of hindsight, it makes too much sense that, in subsequent years, more of Soundgarden's stylistic brethren would take similar sonic turns — take, for instance, Pearl Jam incorporating keyboards in the early 2000s.
Of course, grunge's typical darkness isn't completely absent from the track. Instead of being overwhelming, though, it presents itself through an unease that pervades the intro and verses. Even with the song's major-key tonality, a general marker of brightness and happiness, the lead guitar's subsequent arpeggios feel just a touch... off. It isn't off in a way that damages the song; rather, it enhances "Black Hole Sun" alongside Cornell's stream of consciousness lyrics. After all, the track certainly isn't meant to be an "upper" with lyrics like "Times are gone for honest men."
It's hard pinning down an overarching lyrical narrative, given the aforementioned stream of consciousness writing. When narrowing my lens to the chorus, however, I hear a hope for a new beginning. The titular "black hole sun" strikes me as a source of respite from the rain Cornell hopes to be washed away; perhaps, if we're thinking ever so slightly astronomically, it will suck up the rain and leave him comfortably dry. As for if the black hole goes too far and washes away more than the rain... well, perhaps that's a possibility he's come to accept. The more settled feeling of the ensemble in the chorus, with the electric guitar leading the way, makes the request feel like it's coming from a place of contentment that something good will come, regardless of whether or not the result is exactly what Cornell hopes.
In showing me a brighter side to grunge — both instrumentally and lyrically — "Black Hole Sun" served as a song through which I could more readily approach the rest of grunge, beginning with more of Soundgarden's catalog. While grunge is by no means a favorite style of mine, it's certainly become one I've learned to appreciate, all thanks to one song guiding me toward a deeper sonic profile.
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