{"id":421037,"date":"2026-02-12T03:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T03:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/421037\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T03:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T03:06:12","slug":"the-one-show-chris-cornell-said-was-killing-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/421037\/","title":{"rendered":"The one show Chris Cornell said was killing rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chris<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Chris Cornell)<\/p>\n

Wed 11 February 2026 22:49, UK <\/p>\n

The entire music world looks much different from what Chris Cornell<\/a> was born into back in the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t a right time or place for Soundgarden to surface, but even if they were lumped in with the rest of the grunge bands coming out of Seattle, Cornell was something different when he stepped up to the microphone. Here was someone who could give every single rock and roll singer a run for their money, but he was more interested in delving into the nitty-gritty of what rock and roll could be.<\/p>\n

If you look at what the band was doing on their first few records, you wouldn\u2019t necessarily call what they are doing grunge. It was definitely underground music when they put out Ultramega OK, but a lot of the greatest moments on Loud Love and Badmotorfinger bordered on traditional hard rock and even metal in a few places. That is, until you actually bothered to start learning what they were doing.<\/p>\n

Compared to the out-there songwriting that Kurt Cobain was used to working with, Soundgarden threw out every single rule in the book when working on their songs. They wanted to experiment the same way that Led Zeppelin had back in the day, and a lot of their best songs usually don\u2019t follow the convention 4\/4 structure or have the kind of chords that most kids pick up on during their first guitar lesson.<\/p>\n

Even on their breakout album, Superunknown<\/a>, there\u2019s hardly any song on the record that is both in standard tuning and isn\u2019t in an odd time signature. That was all by design in many respects, but as the 1990s slowly dwindled away, Cornell started to notice more and more people focusing on the superficial side of rock and roll. It was all about the pure power behind someone\u2019s voice, and when shows like American Idol debuted, Cornell realised that the record industry had made a big mistake.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that people like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood don\u2019t deserve every bit of their success, either. They are both powerhouses in their field, but even as a fellow powerhouse vocalist, Cornell felt that people were listening to music for the wrong reasons. It had become more about the voice rather than the actual person behind it, and The Voice felt like one of the worst by-products of that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to see the person singing, but having a show that\u2019s based on a panel of judges judging one voice never sat well with him, saying<\/a>, \u201c[A television show like \u2018The Voice\u2019] has completely taken the focus off of creativity. It\u2019s all how you present yourself. And the outside judgment of what someone\u2019s creative process is? It\u2019s just ludicrous and the opposite of what rock music is certainly. \u2026 The first foot forward in writing a rock song is rejecting popular thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shows like that might have a particular standard for what they\u2019re looking for in a singer, but it\u2019s also going against what the typical legends normally sound like. Not everyone was buying a Bob Dylan record or a Joni Mitchell album looking to hear some of the greatest vocal acrobatics ever put to tape, but that didn\u2019t matter so long as they could hear one person\u2019s story, which doesn\u2019t always happen when singers win that coveted trophy at the end of the show.<\/p>\n

The idea of manufacturing pop stars is certainly enticing for networks that only want the bottom line, but the ones who are going to stick around aren\u2019t focused on making it to the next week on a show. They\u2019re focused on writing something that matters, and people who sing with heart are going to be remembered far more than a singer who has a showstopping voice on every single track.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Chris Cornell) Wed 11 February 2026 22:49, UK The entire music world looks much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[50967,96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-421037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-chris-cornell","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}