CHRIS CORNELL CASHES IN THE REMAINDER OF HIS CREDIBILITY ON SCREAM

Let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoy Timbaland. His work with Ludacris, Jay-Z, and especially Missy Elliot has yielded great, forward-thinking results for his genre of choice. Yes, metal faithful, I think Justin Timberlake’s work with him is damn fine pop music as well. However, Timbaland’s best work has been within the confines of pop music, and I have yet to have a problem with that. His first foray into rock – or rock music as I (and many others, in that his work with No Doubt, Duran Duran, and OneRepublic haven’t exactly strayed far from the bands’ roots) know it is a spectacular, bordering on legendary, misfire. Chris Cornell – Soundgarden’s former golden-throated front man that has spent the better part of this decade coasting with Audioslave – picked perhaps the worst partner for his gravelly shout on his latest (even terribly titled) solo album, Scream. And though I am far from one to decry someone’s sense of artistic exploration, I must say that this one is hilariously misguided. The only thing keeping this album from being a so-horrifically-bad-it’s-good triumph is the familiar sound of Cornell’s shriek over a terribly mismatched backing track, a ploy seemingly utilized for the sake of a desperate stab at commercial relevancy. He’s a long way from Louder than Love, Badmotorfinger, and Superunknown, and it’s hard to see how he’d be able to make his way back.

The album’s biggest and most obvious problem is the lack of artistic compromise. When I initially heard about a Timbaland/Chris Cornell collaboration, I laughed at the hypothetical song in my head: a Timbaland club anthem with Chris’ Lollapalooza-headlining scream over it like F-1 Bombers zooming over a rave. Usually, both parties know to reign it in, filing their signature elements down to properly suit the other one’s talents. But, lo and behold, with Scream’s opening, “Part of Me,” you get a bona fide Timbaland “club banger” with Chris Cornell bellowing, “That bitch ain’t a part of me” over the synth driven beat like Kim Thayill or Tom Morello were still playing behind him. The song itself is a surreal mess; it sounds exactly as bad as you think, at once hilarious, depressing, cognitively dissonant, and confusing. It’s biggest issue isn’t the song itself, but the man singing it. Were it one of today’s R & B superstars singing the semi-misogynistic chorus and verses telling a tale of a night where the protagonist has “one too many” then finds said bitch “rubbing up against me,” ending in “just a fling,” it wouldn’t feel as much like an invasion. But the result feels offensive, albeit hilariously so.

Lyrically, Cornell either had Timbaland help him pen the songs or made the conscious decision to borrow from the vernacular of radio R &B and hip-hop (I personally hope it’s the former). A disturbingly large portion of the album – more than none – is Cornell dictating what “bitches” are doing (the aforementioned “Part of Me” and screeching about how “bitches wanna take my advance” on “Sweet Revenge”). Other places – like the near-unbearable tale of a woman who drives recklessly in “Watch Out,” or a story about a girl “he met at a party about 2 years ago” (so when you were 43, Chris?) on “Other Side of Town“ – show him either describing the goings on of a man literally half his age (for some reason) or depicting his day-to-day routine as a creepy old man. Cornell was never more than an average lyricist, but here he embarrasses himself spectacularly. I’ll take a faux-clever line about “looking California and feeling Minnesota” over “Long Gone”‘s “sometimes my confessions are hard for me/ I’m telling you now I’m setting them free” any day.

Scream’s worst moments conjure up a serious series of questions: Why? Why do this? What possible audience could this be appealing to? Was literally anyone in the world wondering what it would sound like if Chris Cornell started singing R&B hits? Were there a large quotient of club goers saying, “You know, I really like this music, and I really like Soundgarden, but hate how I have to go two places for them?” Were there kids listening to Timbaland’s string of radio hits thinking, “I really like Nelly Furtado and Aaliyah, but is there a way it could sound like they were gargling motor oil and then got punched in the throat right before someone hit ‘record’?” Does Chris Cornell have the worst manager in history? Did none of Timbaland’s hangers-on hear the tracks and think, “Gee, Tim, this sounds pretty bad. Maybe you wanna shut this down and work with someone else?” Did it really not dawn on either of them that this would be a terrible idea, that sometimes some people just shouldn’t work together no matter how much they admire one another? If this kind of album can happen with no one stopping it, how far off can a Mark Lanegan/ Just Blaze collaboration be? Josh Homme/Will.i.am? Are Eddie Vedder and the Neptunes going to make an album or two? Are unreleased vocal tracks of Layne Staley going to get the Rick Ross treatment?

The best songs on Scream – “Take Me Alive,” “Climbing Up the Walls,” the title track – are simply bland, not embarrassing. They hint at the album Cornell perhaps should have made, appeasing his mainstream rock crowd with appropriate bones thrown to his female fans there for the abs and maybe some music as opposed to flat out courting chart success and the young, tweeting masses fueling it. Though his past solo material is spotty at best, Chris Cornell has yet to sink this low outside the confines of his bands (and, including Audioslave, not in them, either). Bland is one thing; thinking that you’re Billboard Hot 100 material – 25 years into your influential rock recording career, no less – is another. Midlife crises usually manifest themselves in new, expensive cars or pursuing significantly younger significant others. Chris Cornell decided to put his to tape.