F# major · Camelot 2B · 105 BPM
Black Hole Sun
by Soundgarden
- 105
- BPM
- F# major
- Key
- 2B
- Camelot
- 36
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Chris Cornell wrote "Black Hole Sun" in his head during a 35 to 40 minute drive home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, where Soundgarden had been working on their fourth album, Superunknown. The title came from a misheard phrase spoken by a television news anchor, and Cornell later said the whole arrangement, including a guitar solo played beneath the riff, came together during that drive. He whistled the melody into a Dictaphone when he got home and estimated the writing took about 15 minutes. He used a Gretsch guitar and admitted he composed it thinking the band would not like it, only for it to become the biggest hit of the summer.
Released on May 23, 1994, by A&M Records as the third single from Superunknown, the song topped the US Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart for seven weeks and finished as the number-one modern rock track of 1994 despite peaking at number two on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. It reached number one in Iceland and hit the top 10 in Australia, Canada, France, and Ireland.
Guitarist Kim Thayil credited the Leslie model 16 speaker with changing the song completely, calling its sound very Beatlesque. Drummer Matt Cameron described the track as a huge departure. Cornell, for his part, insisted that the song was sad, arguing that people mistook it for chipper because the melody was pretty.
Black Hole Sun runs at 105 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.29 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 571 ms. It is in F# major, Camelot 2B, which shares its notes with Eb minor and mixes cleanly with B major and Db major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.