Superunknown is the fourth studio album by American rock band Soundgarden, released on March 8, 1994, through A&M Records. Produced by Michael Beinhorn and the band themselves, Soundgarden began work on the album after touring in support of their previous album, Badmotorfinger (1991). Superunknown retained the heaviness of the band's earlier releases while displaying a more diverse range of influences.
Superunknown was a critical and commercial success and became the band's breakthrough album. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 310,000 copies in its opening week. The album also topped the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand charts. Five singles were released from the album: "The Day I Tried to Live", "My Wave", "Fell on Black Days", "Spoonman", and "Black Hole Sun", the latter two of which won Grammy Awards and helped Soundgarden reach mainstream popularity. At the 37th Grammy Awards, the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. It has been certified 6× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. Superunknown has been listed by several publications as one of the best albums of the 1990s and a quintessential grunge album. In April 2019, it was ranked No. 9 on Rolling Stones "50 Greatest Grunge Albums" list.
Recording
Soundgarden began work on its next album about two months after finishing its stint on the 1992 Lollapolooza tour. The individual band members wrote material on their own before bringing in demos to which the other members would contribute. Frontman Chris Cornell noted that the band allowed each other more artistic freedom than on previous records. Guitarist Kim Thayil observed that even though the band spent as much time writing and arranging as it had on previous albums, it spent a lot more time working on recording the songs. Eventually they settled on producer Michael Beinhorn, who "didn't have his own trademark sound which he was trying to tack on to Soundgarden" and had ideas the band approved. The drum and bass parts were recorded first for each song, and then Cornell and Thayil would lay down their parts over top. The band spent time experimenting with different drum and guitar sounds, and utilized production techniques such as layering to achieve an expansive production sound. Beinhorn tried to add many of his preferred musicians to mold the band's sound, in what Billboard described as "weaning the band from brute force, giving it the impetus to invest in a more subtle power." For instance, prior to tracking the vocals for "Black Hole Sun", Beinhorn had Cornell listen to Frank Sinatra. Soundgarden paused the recording sessions to open for Neil Young on a ten-day United States tour. Cameron said that the band wasn't pleased with the recording of "No Attention" that came out of the sessions. An instrumental entitled "Ruff Riff-Raff" and a light-hearted song called "Bing Bing Goes to Church" were recorded at album rehearsals but were presumably not recorded during the Superunknown recording sessions. Both were released in 2014 on the 20th anniversary Super Deluxe edition.
Composition
The songs on Superunknown retain the grunge and alternative metal sound of the band's previous works, while embracing alternative rock, hard rock, heavy metal, Cornell labeled the album as more "challenging" and "versatile" than the band's previous releases. The songs on the album are more experimental and diverse than the band's previous recordings, with some songs having a Middle-Eastern or Indian flavor (for example "Half", sung by Shepherd). Some songs also show a Beatles influence, such as "Head Down" and "Black Hole Sun". In a 1994 interview with Guitar World, Thayil explained, "We looked deep down inside the very core of our souls and there was a little Ringo sitting there. Oh sure, we like telling people it's John Lennon or George Harrison; but when you really look deep inside of Soundgarden, there's a little Ringo wanting to get out." Drummer Matt Cameron said that the experimentation on the album was "just a matter of refinement." According to The A.V. Club, the album "both redefined and transcended grunge". Michael Beinhorn stated that to achieve the intensity of Superunknown, he sought influence from European electronic music, such as the British Aphex Twin and the Dutch genre of Gabber, described by him as "some of the rawest music made".
Soundgarden used alternate tunings and odd time signatures across several tracks. "Spoonman", "Black Hole Sun", "Let Me Drown", and "Kickstand" are performed in drop D tuning, whereas "Fell on Black Days" uses standard tuning. Other songs employ more unorthodox tunings: "Superunknown" and "Fresh Tendrils" are tuned to DGDGBe, and "Like Suicide" utilizes a similar DGDGBC arrangement. "My Wave" and "The Day I Tried to Live" both use EEBBBe; "Mailman" and "Limo Wreck" employ CGDGBe; "Head Down" and "Half" utilize CGCGGe; and "4th of July" features CFCGBe tuning. The band's use of odd meters was equally varied: "Fell on Black Days" is written in 6/4, "Limo Wreck" is in 15/8, "My Wave" alternates between 5/4 and 4/4, and "The Day I Tried to Live" alternates between 7/8 and 4/4 sections. Thayil noted that Soundgarden rarely considered a song's time signature until after it was completely written, calling the use of odd meters "a total accident."
Lyrically, the album is dark and mysterious, exploring themes of substance abuse, suicide, and depression, alongside running motifs of revenge, annihilation, seclusion, fear, loss, death, and discovery. Cornell was heavily inspired by the writings of Sylvia Plath during the writing sessions. Commenting on the album's lyrics, Thayil said that "a lot of Superunknown seems to me to be about life, not death. Maybe not affirming it, but rejoicing—like the Druids [put it]: 'Life is good, but death's gonna be even better!" Cornell stated that "Let Me Drown" is about "crawling back to the womb to die", "Fell on Black Days" is about realizing "you're unhappy in the extreme", and "4th of July" is about using LSD. Cornell talked about "Mailman" at a concert saying, "This next one is about killing your boss. It's about coming to work early one morning cause you have a special agenda and you're going to shoot him in the fucking head." The title of the song is credited to bassist Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam. While on the set of the movie Singles, Ament produced a list of song titles for the fictional band featured in the movie.
Packaging
The album's cover art (known as the 'Screaming Elf') is a distorted photograph of the band members, photographed by Kevin Westenberg, above a black and white upside-down burning forest. Concerning the artwork, Cornell said, "Superunknown relates to birth in a way ... Being born or even dying—getting flushed into something that you know nothing about. The hardest thing is to nail down a visual image to put on a title like that. The first thing we thought of was a forest in grey or black. Soundgarden has always been associated with images of flowers and lush colors and this was the opposite. It still seemed organic but it was very dark and cold ... I was into those stories as a kid where forests were full of evil and scary things as opposed to being happy gardens that you go camping in."
On May 25, 2017, photographer Kevin Westenberg revealed the full photo from the cover for the first time on his Instagram account.
Critical reception
Superunknown received universal acclaim from music critics. Q said, "Soundgarden dealt in unreconstructed heavy rock: a heavy guitar sound, depth-charge drumming ... Yet Superunknown also includes more measured moments". In Entertainment Weekly, David Browne wrote, "Soundgarden is pumped and primed on Superunknown, and they deliver the goods." He praised it as a "hard-rock milestone – a boiling vat of volcanic power, record-making smarts, and '90s anomie and anxiety that sets a new standard for anything called metal." In a retrospective review, AllMusic editor Steve Huey wrote, "It's obvious that Superunknown was consciously styled as a masterwork, and it fulfills every ambition."
"We were listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam just like everybody else," remarked Def Leppard's Vivian Campbell, "and especially to Soundgarden – the Superunknown record. That was the record that we referenced in terms of the sonics and the mood of it when making Slang."
Accolades
The critical acclaim garnered by Superunknown has led to its inclusion in many lists of the greatest albums.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Accolades for Superunknown
|-
! scope="col" | Publication
! scope="col" | Country
! scope="col" | Accolade
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Rank
|-
| The Village Voice
| United States
| Pazz & Jop: Greatest Albums of 1994
| 1994
| 11
|-
| Entertainment Weekly
| United States
| The Best and Worst 1994/Music
| 1994
| 3 (Best)
|-
| rowspan="3" | Spin
| rowspan="3" | United States
| "Top 20 Albums of 1994"
| 1994
| 17
|-
| "Top 90 Albums of the 90s"
| 1999
| 70
|-
| "125 Best Albums of the last 25 Years"
| 2012
| 90
|-
| rowspan="3" | Rolling Stone
| rowspan="3" | United States
| "Best Albums of 1994"
| 1995
| 3
|-
| "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"
| 2012
| 335
|-
| "The 100 Greatest Albums of the 90s"
| 2011
| 38
|-
| Muziekkrant OOR
| Netherlands
| "The 100 Best Albums of 1991–1995"
| 1995
| 49
|-
| Alternative Press
| United States
| "The 90 Greatest Albums of the 90s"
| 1998
| 18
|-
| Kerrang!
| United Kingdom
| "100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die"
| 1998
| 70
|-
| Pause & Play
| United States
| "The 90s Top 100 Essential Albums"
| 1999
| 11
|-
| Rock Hard
| Germany
| "The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time"
| 2005
| 304
|-
| Loudwire
| United States
| "10 Best Hard Rock Albums of 1994"
| 2014
| 3
|-
| Wall of Sound
| United States
| "Top 100 Albums of All Time"
| 1999
| 89
|}
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Unranked list inclusions for Superunknown
|-
! scope="col" | Publication
! scope="col" | Country
! scope="col" | List
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Ref
|-
| Guitar World
| United States
| 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994
| 2014
|
|-
| 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
| Global
| 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
| 2005
|
|}
Commercial performance
Superunknown was Soundgarden's breakthrough album, earning the band international recognition. Upon its release in March 1994, Superunknown debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and eventually closed the year as the 13th best-selling album of 1994, with 2.5 million copies sold. The album has been certified six times platinum by the RIAA in the United States, three times platinum in Canada and Australia, and two times platinum in Sweden, platinum in the United Kingdom, and gold in the Netherlands and Italy.
The album spawned the EP Songs from the Superunknown and the CD-ROM Alive in the Superunknown, both released in 1995.
20th anniversary reissues
The 20th anniversary reissue of "Superunknown" was made available in two deluxe versions. The Deluxe Edition was a 2-CD package featuring the remastered album along with disc two consisting of demos, rehearsals, B-sides and more. The Super Deluxe Edition was a 5-CD package featuring the remastered album, additional demos, rehearsals and B-sides and the fifth disc is the album mixed in Blu-ray Audio 5.1 Surround Sound. The Super Deluxe Edition was packaged in a hardbound book with a lenticular cover, liner notes by David Fricke and newly reimagined album artwork designed by Josh Graham. It also featured never-before-seen band photography by Kevin Westerberg. A 2-LP gatefold of the original 16 vinyl tracks remastered on 200-gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket was also made available. In addition, the Superunknown singles and associated b-sides with newly interpreted artwork sleeves by Josh Graham was reissued on Record Store Day, April 19, 2014, as a set of five limited-edition 10-inch vinyl records."
Tour
The band began touring in support of the album in January 1994 with dates in Oceania and Japan, It marked Soundgarden's first time touring those areas. This initial leg concluded in February 1994, and the band moved on to Europe the following month. supported by opening acts Tad and Eleven.
Track listing
Personnel
Soundgarden
- Chris Cornell – vocals, rhythm guitar
- Kim Thayil – lead guitar
- Ben Shepherd – bass; additional drums and percussion ("Head Down"); additional vocals ("Spoonman"); lead vocals and guitar ("Half")
- Matt Cameron – drums, percussion; Mellotron ("Mailman"); pots and pans ("Spoonman")
Additional musicians
- April Acevez – viola ("Half")
- Artis the Spoonman – spoons ("Spoonman")
- Michael Beinhorn – piano ("Let Me Drown")
- Fred Chalenor – harmonic guidance ("Limo Wreck")
- Justine Foy – cello ("Half")
- Gregg Keplinger – additional drums and percussion ("Head Down")
- Natasha Shneider – clavinet ("Fresh Tendrils")
Production
- Michael Beinhorn - producer, mixing ("4th of July")
- David Collins – mastering
- Jason Corsaro – engineering
- Adam Kasper – assistant engineering
- Kelk – front cover design
- Gregg Keplinger – studio assistance
- Tony Messina – studio assistance
- Brendan O'Brien – mixing (except "4th of July")
- Reyzart – layout
- Soundgarden – production
- Kevin Westenberg – band photography
- Susan Silver – management
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable"
|+Initial chart performance for Superunknown
! Chart (1994)
! Peak<br />position
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Australia Alternative Albums (ARIA)
|align="center"|1
|-
|-
!scope="row"| Canadian Albums (The Record)
| style="text-align:center;"| 1
|-
|-
! scope="row"| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)
| style="text-align:center;"| 7
|-
|-
!scope="row"|European Albums (European Top 100 Albums)
| style="text-align:center;"| 30
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|US Cashbox Album Charts
|align="center"|1
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable"
|+Weekly chart performance for 20th anniversary reissue
! Chart (2014–2015)
! Peak<br />position
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|US Tastemaker Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 12
|-
!scope="row"|US Vinyl Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 9
|}
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable"
|+Weekly chart performance for Superunknown upon Chris Cornell's death
! Chart (2017)
! Peak<br />position
|-
!scope="row"|Canadian Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 22
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|US Digital Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 9
|-
!scope="row"|US Hard Rock Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 2
|-
!scope="row"|US Top Catalog Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 1
|-
!scope="row"|US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)
|align="center"| 5
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable"
|+1994 year-end chart performance for Superunknown
! Chart (1994)
! Position
|-
!scope="row"| Australian Albums (ARIA)
| style="text-align:center;"| 20
|-
|-
!scope="row"| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)
| style="text-align:center;"| 62
|-
!scope="row"|European Albums (European Top 100 Albums)
| style="text-align:center;"|28
|-
!scope="row"| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)
| style="text-align:center;"| 24
|-
! scope="row"| Icelandic Albums (Tónlist)
| style="text-align:center;"|9
|-
!scope="row"|New Zealand Albums (Recorded Music NZ)
| style="text-align:center;"| 25
|-
!scope="row"| Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)
| style="text-align:center;"| 32
|-
!scope="row"|UK Albums (OCC)
| style="text-align:center;"|71
|-
!scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| style="text-align:center;"| 19
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+1995 year-end chart performance for Superunknown
! Chart (1995)
! Position
|-
!scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| style="text-align:center;"| 88
|}