Songoftheday 5/4/20 - I caught the moon today, pick it up and throw it away all right...
from the album Down on the Upside (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #37 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2
Today's song of the day comes from the Seattle grunge rock band Soundgarden, who made their breakthrough on pop radio in the fall of 1994 with the trippy psychedelic metal song "Black Hole Sun", which reached the top 40 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart. After touring behind that album, the group returned to record their fifth studio album, and what would turn out to be their last for over a decade. In the spring of 1996, Soundgarden released to radio the lead promoted single for Down On The Upside, which would come out that May. "Pretty Noose", written by lead singer Chris Cornell, with the band producing the track with Adam Kasper, was a strikingly-titled take on a bad relationship that was definitely louder and crunchier than what would be on the rest of the record...
Since, like "Black Hole Sun", "Pretty Noose" wasn't released in America as a commercially sold "single", it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official pop Hot 100 chart. However it got enough mainstream radio love to get to the Airplay component of that list in June of 1996. The song spent a week at #2 on the Alternative Rock radio chart, while getting to #4 on the Mainstream Rock format tally. Internationally, the single peaked at #10 in Finland, while making the top-40 in the UK (#14), New Zealand (#18), Australia (#22), and Italy (#32), while just missing that mark in Canada (#43) and Sweden (#42). The Down On The Upside album went to #2 on the U.S. sales charts, shifting over a million copies. At the 1997 Grammy Awards, "Pretty Noose" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing out to the Smashing Pumpkins for their "Bullet With Butterfly Wings".
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
A second version of the music video for the song was shot by the band's bassist Ben Shepherd's brother Henry, featuring just the band miming the song...
Next up is the band in concert in 1996...
and finally, the reunited Soundgarden at Red Rocks in 2011...
Up tomorrow: This rock band has simply had more than enough.
Comments