Songoftheday 6/25/20 - Follow me into the desert as thirsty as you are, crack a smile and cut your mouth and drown in alcohol...
from the album Down On The Upside (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #40 (one week)
Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 1
Today's song of the day comes from the grunge rock band from Seattle, Soundgarden, whose fifth album Down On The Upside had already landed a top-40 radio hit in the summer of 1996 with "Pretty Noose". The second song promoted to radio from the disc was "Burden In My Hand". Written by lead singer/guitarist Chris Cornell and produced by the band with Adam Kasper, the song is pretty dark, with a murderous narrative going on...
Since "Burden In My Hand", like "Pretty Noose", wasn't released as a commercial single, it was unable to place on Billboard magazine's official pop Hot 100 chart. However, the song garnered enough mainstream radio love to make it to the top-40 portion of the airplay component of the list in September of 1996. The track was a huge hit on rock radio, spending five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, and two weeks at #2 on the Alternative Rock tally. Internationally, the single was a top ten hit in Canada at #9, while making the top-40 in the UK at #33. The third radio release from the set, "Blow Up The Outside World", also topped the Mainstream Rock chart for four weeks, while topping out at #8 on the Alternative Rock list. It didn't get put out as a single, and went to #53 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart. It also claimed a third top-40 hit in the UK at #40. A fourth song, "Rhinosaur", was a decent Mainstream Rock radio hit at #19.
The band toured behind the album, but that proved to be a disaster, as internal conflicts broke them up by the end of the shows. A greatest hits set, with rock radio hit "Bleed Together" (#13 Mainstream Rock, #32 Alternative Rock), signed them off for a while. Cornell scored a couple of top ten rock hits with "Sunshower" from the movie adaptation of Great Expectations (#8 MR) and "Can't Change Me", from his first solo album Euphoria Morning in 1999. Meanwhile, drummer Matt Cameron joined fellow Seattle grunge rockers Pearl Jam that year.
In 2001, Cornell formed a new band, Audioslave, which scored a string of rock hits between 2002 and 2006, including two that made the pop top-40 (future SOTDs). After releasing a second solo album produced by Timbaland, Cornell and Soundgarden reunited in 2010, at first with another compilation album Telephantasm, which contained an older song that was unreleased before, "Black Rain", which became the band's only official Hot 100 appearance at #96, and also garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing to "supergroup" Them Crooked Vultures for "New Fang" (it was the last in that category, and they were also up against Stone Temple Pilots). Two years later, the band contributed a new song for the Avengers: Assemble superhero movie, "Live To Rise", which returned the band to the top of the Mainstream Rock chart. Later that year, Soundgarden re-emerged with their sixth, and final album King Animal. That record spun off another pair of #1 Mainstream Rock hits with "Been Away Too Long" and "By Crooked Steps". The band was working on a second album when Cornell was found dead in a hotel room in Las Vegas, officially attributed to suicide. The band since had been trying to finish the work but as yet have had problems with the estate, so the record is in limbo.
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Here's Chris Cornell and Soundgarden appearing on British TV to perform the song live...
And the band in concert in 2013...
Up tomorrow: California rap collective gets low.
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