Chris Cornell's Like Suicide

This is an old post from 2006 that I'm resurrecting because I'm deep into a Cornell nostalgia kick lately, and because I just found a pretty incredible live video of the song.   The sound quality sucks a tad, but the performance is fan-freakin'-tastic.



The song "Like Suicide" (from the Soundgarden album, Superunkown) is arguably one of Chris Cornell's most beautiful and most poetic. The story goes that Chris was sitting at home working on the music that became the song when he heard the sound of something hitting the window in another room. His first thought was apparently that someone was trying to break in. He went outside, walked around the house, and found that a bird had flown into the window and was flopping around on the ground below with a broken neck. He apparently had to take a brick from the edge of the garden and finish her off, then he went back inside, sat down, and wrote the lyrics.

To me, that story makes total sense when compared to the lyrics. I read a post at some forum or another, though, in which some guy analyzed the song as being about heroin use. The dude went through the song line by line and explained all these metaphors that he saw as describing someone's experience with heroin. I think that interpretation really sells Chris Cornell short and I've felt compelled for a long time to rebut the guy's analysis of the song. So, here goes:

Heard it from another room
Eyes were waking up just to fall asleep
Love's like suicide
Dazed out in the garden bed
With a broken neck lays my broken gift
Just like suicide

So far, fits Chris's story exactly. The one line that I'm still not sure of the meaning of is "Eyes were waking up, just to fall asleep", but Soundgarden-era Cornell is chock full of damned obscure metaphors. The line "With a broken neck lays my broken gift" is a beautifully poignant description of what he found.

And my last ditch
Was my last brick
Lent to finish her
Finish her

Bit down on the bullet now
I had a taste so sour
I had to think of something sweet
Love's like suicide
Safe outside my gilded cage
With an ounce of pain
I wield a ton of rage
Just like suicide

Again, these verses describe the event Chris alleges the song is about. To take that brick and put the bird out of her misery was so difficult, it left "... a taste so sour, [he] had to think of something sweet." It was an act that couldn't be committed with detachment, it had to be fueled by the sadness and frustration stirred in him by the sight of the injured bird.

With eyes of blood
And bitter blue
How I feel for you
I feel for you

She lived like a murder
How she'd fly so sweetly
She lived like a murder
But she died
Just like suicide

I have to admit that I listened to the song for a year or so before I made the "murder/suicide" connection. Having read in the past that Cornell's a bit of a nature junkie, and being one myself, I finally realized what I think he meant by those references. To watch a creature like that fly can be so beautiful, it just kills you ("She lived like a murder, how she'd fly so sweetly"). For that same creature to die in such a way, both literally in the act of flinging herself against the window and figuratively in the unnecissariness of her death, feels senseless in the way that most suicides do.

To me, there's no question that Cornell's explanation of the song is valid and it says a lot about him as a person. That he could be so moved by the event to sit down and write such an incredibly touching description of it indicates that he's a more complex character than your stereotypical "rock star". By insisting that the song is about heroin use, the guy at that other forum seems to see Cornell as nothing but that stereotype. In doing so, the guy makes both himself and Chris Cornell seem sadly one-dimensional. Personally, reading Chris's explanation of this wonderful song gave me a lot of respect for him. But maybe I'm just naive.