Spoonman
by Soundgarden
- 92
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 28
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Artis the Spoonman, a street performer from Santa Cruz and later Seattle who plays music with a set of spoons, gave the song its name and plays on it. His spoons come in on the bridge. Chris Cornell wrote "Spoonman" for Soundgarden, and Artis is also the focus of the video, where the band appears only in black-and-white still photographs.
The song began in 1992 as part of the soundtrack to the film Singles. Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament had been asked to invent a name for a fictional band in the movie and had made a list of options that included "Spoonman" before he settled on Citizen Dick. Cornell used the names on the list to write songs, and an acoustic version of this one plays in a scene where a poster for a Citizen Dick show is stapled to a lightpost. Soundgarden then built an electric version. Drummer Matt Cameron added pots and pans, and bassist Ben Shepherd sang backing vocals.
Rumors tied the lyrics to heroin, but Cornell always denied it, saying the song was about the paradox of who Artis is and how people judge him on the street. It came out on February 7, 1994, as the lead single from Superunknown. It reached number three on the Album Rock Tracks chart and won the 1995 Grammy for Best Metal Performance.
Spoonman runs at 92 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.61 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 652 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.