My iPod #247: Soundgarden - The Day I Tried to Live

"The Day I Tried to Live" is a track, and also was a single, from Soundgarden's album "Superunknown", which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The band plan to reissue the whole album along with b-sides, outtakes and some cool t-shirts. You can pre-order the bundle here!

The song is another one of those which I heard for the first time when its video (above) appeared on MTV2. I liked it from that moment on. The descending bass riff at the beginning and its weird time signature (it changes from 7/4 to 4/4 throughout) was what caught my attention. The song also showed me how amazing Chris Cornell actually is as a vocalist. "Cochise", "Black Hole Sun", "Original Fire" - all those sung by him were some tracks that I'd seen on the TV before "The Day", but they never exhibited the range the man possesses. At some point in "The Day", Cornell's sings in a low register before screaming like a banshee in a split second. All in what is probably one take too. It is incredible.

Apparently, people have taken this track to be something of a suicide kind of thing, but Cornell stated that it is simply about getting out of the house and doing normal things instead of being a recluse. It is meant to be optimistic. He said so here almost twenty years ago. I will continue to listen to it with that mindset.