One of my favourite things about writing here is finding a song/album/artist that has been a huge part of my life and digging deeper and learning more about how that music came to be. I was never obsessed with the stories behind the music growing up – good music has just always been there, taken for granted, life’s soundtrack that rarely took centre stage – and I’m fascinated now as I discover these backstories so many years later because they provide me with context and help shape the world I was growing up in, yet so unaware of.
It’s hard to imagine that time when information was not right at our fingertips; yet, if it wasn’t in the liner notes or I missed that one radio or MuchMusic interview, the stories behind the music disappeared into the ether and by the time they became accessible the music was already so deeply rooted into the fabric of my life that I didn’t think to even seek them out.
When I heard it had been 25 years and they were going to be reissuing the Singles soundtrack with new bonus material, to say I was excited would be an understatement.
I put Singles up there as one of the best soundtracks of all time.
Not only was the music more important than the movie, the Singles soundtrack was the early nineties. This movie was being made as the scene in Seattle was blowing up… Eddie Vedder was new to Pearl Jam when filming began, the movie’s sound was authentic and real and reflective of what was actually happening in the city almost a year before Nevermind woke the world up. Grunge was happening and this soundtrack wasn’t one that was cashing in on the movement, it was one that helped establish it.
Not that this was why I liked it so much. I liked it so much because it was just GOOD music.
Before I downloaded the new deluxe reissue this morning on iTunes I pulled out my tape, which still plays surprisingly well given that the words are faded on either side and that this was easily one of the most played cassettes in my collection throughout the 90’s. I had to rewind as it was halfway through Dyslexic Heart… that play/rewind push down combo that made Paul Westerberg, then Chris Cornell, turn into squeaky chipmunks-on-crack versions of themselves.
As Seasons started to play I was immediately brought back to my childhood bedroom, to a time before I would play this tape in my car, a time before I would hear it at high school parties… a time when I would lie down in my room (on a waterbed, no less) with the lights out, my Walkman on, and just let the music consume the night.
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Reading Cameron Crowe’s recounting in Rolling Stone on what it was like on the set of Singles and putting this soundtrack together only adds to the notion that this album is a true, genuine, love letter to the city of Seattle and the people who were forming the scene at the time.
That Chris Cornell introduced Cameron Crowe to the music of Smashing Pumpkins is exactly the kind of detail that lifts this soundtrack up above a lot of the noise that gets passed off for art in today’s soundtracks. The labour of love that went into making this mix tape, making sure each track was just right, told a story and was put in the right order, overshadowed the movie itself, something Crowe has admitted wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“I have my problems with Singles. To me, Singles is the least successful of the movies I’ve been lucky enough to make. It was meant to be Manhattan, a movie I loved, set in Seattle. It stayed in the can for a year until the studio released it on the heels of the so-called “grunge explosion,” which created some problems of perception. But there were also some casting issues and some screenwriting problems I never quite solved.”
If you know Cameron Crowe and his movies, this next bit from the same interview doesn’t surprise you:
It starts with the music. Always. I hear the movie before I can ever write it. I would say that 80% of the time, that’s the successful stuff. It’s the other stuff I have to work for to get right, and sometimes it doesn’t work out, but the music is always the beginning.
Not surprising at all for the guy who wrote this scene:
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The reissue of Singles happening in the same week as Chris Cornell’s death is a 25-year-old echo we are only just now able to hear.
Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone died while Crowe was writing the script to Singles and the way the music community reacted in the city was a large inspiration for both the film and the soundtrack. A generation of musicians on the cusp of greatness, together on one album, in one city, at one place and time.
And Chris Cornell was front and centre of it all. Seasons was his first solo track ever and the reissue has a total of seven solo tracks from him. I have had Flutter Girl on repeat for the last hour in the background while writing this post.
While very few people would dispute Kurt Cobain and Nirvana as the leaders of the Grunge revolution, they were so far above a soundtrack like this that this snapshot in time of Seattle in the 90s doesn’t even mention them.
But Cornell, his influence is everywhere here. Writing the songs, performing in his band and solo, his voice acting almost as narrator. A voice we have all been eulogizing all week long. A voice that opened up Seattle to the world.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia and over-sentimentalize what this album and Cornell’s contributions to it means, especially given the timing and circumstances of his death. It’s easy for any look-back to take on the air of memorializing for the sake of memorializing; drawing the conclusion that the album will serve as Cornell’s swan song, his last gift to us all before passing.
The hard part is to ask if, had Cornell not died this week, would people be writing the same things about the quarter-century milestone of this soundtrack?
Impossible to answer, but for those of us who knew then as it was happening (or learned later) how important a time in music this was, I’d like to think that these are exactly the kinds of things we would have been writing anyway.
Given the timing, this is an album release that, without ever having meant to, may also be able to offer some closure for those mourning Cornell’s passing. As Blackstar did for Bowie, the Singles reissue gives us a chance to say goodbye.
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Further Listening: Nothing Compares 2 U
This version of this incredible song gives me chills and while it might be a bit maudlin to frame it as a eulogy to Cornell himself, I think most fans of the man and his voice would forgive me.