Soundgarden was an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington in 1984 by lead singer and drummer Chris Cornell, lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Matt Cameron became the band's permanent drummer in 1986 while bassist Ben Shepherd became a permanent replacement for Yamamoto in 1990.

Soundgarden was one of the key bands in the creation of grunge, a style of alternative rock that developed in Seattle and was based around the band's record label Sub Pop. Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label, though the band did not achieve commercial success until Seattle contemporaries Nirvana and Pearl Jam popularized grunge in the early 1990s.

Soundgarden achieved its biggest success with the 1994 album, Superunknown, which debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and yielded the Grammy Award–winning singles "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman". In 1997, the band broke up due to internal strife over its creative direction. Soundgarden has sold eight million records in the U.S.,[1] and an estimated twenty million albums worldwide

Soundgarden was a pioneer of the grunge music genre, which mixed elements of punk rock and heavy metal into a dirty, aggressive sound. Soundgarden's sound during the early years of the Seattle grunge scene has been described as consisting of "gnarled neo-Zeppelinisms."[59] The influence of Led Zeppelin was evident, with Q magazine noting that Soundgarden were "in thrall to '70s rock, but contemptuous of the genre's overt sexism and machismo."[60] Sub Pop viewed the band as having an angle that featured "a hunky lead singer and fused Led Zeppelin and the Butthole Surfers."[61] The Butthole Surfers' mix of punk, heavy metal and noise rock was a major influence on the early work of Soundgarden.[61] Soundgarden and other early grunge bands were also influenced by British post-punk bands such as Gang of Four and Bauhaus, which were popular in the early 1980s Seattle scene.[62] Soundgarden broadened its musical range with its later releases. By 1994’s Superunknown, the band began to incorporate more pop and psychedelic influences into its music.[63] As a member of Soundgarden, Cornell became known for his wide vocal range and his dark, existentialist lyrics.

Soundgarden would often utilize alternative tunings and odd time signatures in its songs. Many Soundgarden songs were performed in drop D tuning, including "Jesus Christ Pose", "Outshined", "Spoonman", and "Black Hole Sun". The E strings of the instruments were at times tuned lower, such as on "Rusty Cage", where the bottom E string is tuned all the way down to B.[64] Some songs use more unorthodox tunings: "My Wave" and "The Day I Tried to Live" are both in a E-E-B-B-B-E tuning.[65] Soundgarden's use of odd-meter time signatures was varied as well; while such songs as "Jesus Christ Pose" are in typical 4/4 time, "Outshined" is in 7/4, "My Wave" uses 5/4, "Fell on Black Days" is in 6/4, "Never the Machine Forever" uses 9/8, "Rusty Cage" uses 4/4 in its chorus and a repeated pattern of 6/4, 2/4, and 5/4 in its coda, and "Spoonman" alternates between 7/4 and 4/4 sections. Thayil has said that Soundgarden usually did not consider the time signature of a song until after the band had written it, and said that the use of odd meters was "a total accident

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