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Black Hole Sun is a song by the American alternative rock band Soundgarden. It was the third single released from the album Superunknown (1994). It is without question the band's most recognizable and most popular song. The song topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It would later appear on the band's greatest hits album A-Sides and the 2007 Chris Cornell compilation The Roads We Choose - A Retrospective. Its guitar solo was ranked 63 in Guitar World's "100 Greatest Guitar Solos"
The song was written by frontman Chris Cornell. Cornell said that he wrote the song in about 15 minutes. Cornell came up with the song while using a Leslie speaker. Kim Thayil said that the Leslie speaker was perfect for the song as "it's very Beatlesque and has a distinctive sound." The song was performed in drop D tuning. Matt Cameron called the song "a huge departure."
Cornell stated, "It's just sort of a surreal dreamscape, a weird, play-with-the-title kind of song." He also said that "lyrically it's probably the closest to me just playing with words for words' sake, of anything I've written. I guess it worked for a lot of people who heard it, but I have no idea how you'd begin to take that one literally." In another interview he elaborated further, stating, "It's funny because hits are usually sort of congruent, sort of an identifiable lyric idea, and that song pretty much had none. The chorus lyric is kind of beautiful and easy to remember. Other than that, I sure didn't have an understanding of it after I wrote it. I was just sucked in by the music and I was painting a picture with the lyrics. There was no real idea to get across." Commenting upon how the song was misinterpreted as being positive, Cornell said, "No one seems to get this, but "Black Hole Sun" is sad. But because the melody is really pretty, everyone thinks it's almost chipper, which is ridiculous."
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