Hunger Strike
by Temple of the Dog
- 137
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 37
- Danceability
- 3
- Acousticness
In late 1990, Temple of the Dog were recording in Seattle at London Bridge Studio with producer Rick Parashar. Chris Cornell had formed the group as a tribute to his friend Andrew Wood, and he was working through "Hunger Strike" at rehearsal, struggling with the vocals. He had thought the song might be filler. Eddie Vedder, in town rehearsing with Pearl Jam and waiting around, walked up to the microphone and sang the low parts. Cornell said the light bulb came on, and Vedder sang half of it exactly the way Cornell had been thinking of doing it. Vedder was later invited to record it with Cornell, and it was his first featured vocal on a record.
Mike McCready played guitar on it after Cornell showed him the riff. He used the fourth-position tone setting on his '62 reissue Strat for the soft opening, then switched to the front pickup for the heavier part.
The album came out in April 1991 and drew little notice. In the summer of 1992, A&M Records noticed that Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, whose members made up the group, had both broken through in the meantime. The label reissued the album and promoted "Hunger Strike" as a single. It peaked at number four on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and number seven on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Hunger Strike runs at 137 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.75 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 438 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
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