Corbin Reiff has been working on a book about Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell and he just started writing for Vulture. It would make sense for him to write an article on Soundgarden, but he went all in and ranked all 134 songs from Soundgarden’s recorded history. The number-one choice might be a shock to some, “4th of July” from Superunknown.
The goal here is to rank the relative quality of each and every one of Soundgarden’s songs, and the best one the band ever recorded was “4th of July.” Tucked near the end of Superunknown, “4th of July” opens with a brutal churn of doom-laden, de-tuned guitar chords. Cornell starts to sing in this dreamy, far-off manner, through the first verse, that instantly puts you ill-at-ease, before kicking things up a notch with a shrieking high harmony and the introduction of Cameron’s eerily lackadaisical drumming. If the Apocalypse were nigh, and the Four Horsemen emerged from the heavens bringing destruction and chaos and pain with them, I imagine they’d be galloping across the blood-soaked plains to the tune of this song. It probably wouldn’t shock you to discover that Cornell wrote “4th of July” while reminiscing about an acid trip where he saw two figures, one in a black shirt and one in a red shirt, who followed him around for a day and spoke to each other behind his back. “I feel it in the wind / I saw it in the sky / I thought it was the end / I thought it was the 4th of July.” It’s everything great about Soundgarden in a single, five-minute package.
The top ten looked like this:
- “4th of July” from Superunknown
- “Outshined” from Badmotorfinger
- “Black Hole Sun” from Superunknown
- “Slaves and Bulldozers” from Badmotorfinger
- “Rusty Cage” from Badmotorfinger
- “Gun” from Louder Than Love
- “Beyond the Wheel” from Ultramega OK
- “Fell on Black Days” from Superunknown
- “Tighter and Tighter” from Down on the Upside
- “Mailman” from Superunknown
See the full ranked list from Vulture here
Don’t forget Corbin joined Kaytie and Cutter for an episode of Cutter’s Rockcast a few months back.
