We briefly touched the importance of Detroit for Techno. Seattle provided a similar role for Grunge (a slang term meaning “repugnant” or “dirt”), an alternative rock subgenre that blends Punk and Heavy Metal and was hugely popular in the early to mid Nineties. While some of the bands considered to be typical representatives of the genre embraced the term, others – like Soundgarden, one of a number of big names to initially sign with “Sub Pop”, the Seattle label that popularised the musical variety – did not at all.
Formed in 1984 it took the band ten years to get to their zenith, the album “Superunknown” which contained a number of Grammy award winning hits, among which “Black Hole Sun” is probably the best-known.
The song was allegedly written in about 15 minutes, with lead singer Chris Cornell mishearing something on the news as the titular quote, then fantasizing about what might happen should a black hole collide with our sun. It’s a rather bleak end-time scenario, but the singer disclosed that writing such lyrics “usually make me feel better”.
When it came to producing the video the band at the time was quite disillusioned, as they had been working with a number of directors that did not understand their point of view. So they told Howard Greenhalgh that they just wanted to stand there, doing nothing and distinctively not be excited about it, while he was given a free pass to do whatever he liked around them – an idea he ostensibly loved.