For the first time, the number one song of 1992 comes with an asterisk.  While my number one song of the year is a great song, I mean it when I say… it is not my favorite song of the year.  My favorite song of 1992, in any genre, is my final sin of omission.  For a time, I even considered destroying my rules for chart success and make this the official number one, but then I’d get tons of questions regarding “Well, then, shouldn’t ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ be your number one song of 1976?”  While the song is rightfully recognized as a hit song today, the song failed to chart on the Modern Rock charts and barely scraped onto the Mainstream Rock charts at #45, in the final months where the Mainstream Rock charts featured 50 songs.  For this song to not become a chart success is a crime against humanity.  It is the greatest song this band ever made, and somehow manages to combine the greatest guitar riff of the year, with the greatest song lyric of the year.  The following song’s lack of success, quite frankly, leaves me looking California and feeling Minnesota.

Ladies and gentlemen… OUT.  SHINED.

“Outshined” – Soundgarden

Mainstream Rock
#45 peak (February 8, 1992), 4 weeks on chart

UK
#50 peak (November 21, 1992), 1 week on chart

I know I’m supposed to keep my entries for the sins of omission short, but I love this song too much to do a basic “this song’s good, check it out” summary.  So I’m going knives out on this entry.  Over the last one and a half years, “Outshined” has become one of my favorite songs of all time.  I’ve played it on my Spotify too many times to count, to the point that now Spotify often automatically sends me to “Outshined” when I’ve finished a metal or hard rock album.  I’m waiting for the day when I’m listening to one of my 70’s pop or R&B bands and suddenly, this thing comes on.  It is not just Soundgarden’s best song (yes, over “Black Hole Sun”), but one of the greatest alternative rock songs ever made, and the song that solidified Soundgarden’s status as part of the Mount Rushmore of grunge.  Where to start?

Let’s start with the incredible riff that powers this song.  When I mentioned that “Them Bones” was one of the greatest songs ever written in 7/4 time a few minutes ago, well… this is the greatest song ever made in 7/4 time.  To all you Pink Floyd fans who are livid that I just announced there is a better song in 7/4 than “Money”: Keep it.  Some songs sound like they could knock down a building.  Well, Kim Thayil’s main riff would destroy a palace.  It is so simple yet so vicious, so unrelenting, so brutal in its execution with its D-F-G-F-D-F-C-G-F chord progression.  It is amazing.  No grunge riff, except for maybe the repetitive D# chord from “Man In The Box,” is more unstoppable.  In order to make the guitar riff sound as huge and massive as it sounds, both Thayil and Chris Cornell played the main riff using different guitar tones, with one track brighter with more distortion to add the angry effect, and the other track being darker with less distortion.  With that in mind, it’s no wonder the song’s guitar sound is so monstrous: it’s a sound that can’t be duplicated on a single guitar.  Honestly, the song’s main riff could have gone on forever and I wouldn’t have minded it.  But just when some may consider the riff overly repetitive, Thayil adds his three chord riff in the pre-chorus that adds the gleam of light running against the muck.  And finally, there is the epic lead guitar riff running up to the high B minor chord, before it descends back into the ugliness of the epic rhythm section.  It is the perfect encapsulation of the song’s subject matter, which focuses on the fluctuations of Chris Cornell’s personality.

In interviews, Chris Cornell acknowledged that “Outshined” is about his tortured mind and how it shifts on him.  In 1992, he stated, “I definitely go through periods of extreme self-confidence, feeling like I can do anything… but then someone will say something, however insignificant, or I’ll get something in my head and, all of a sudden, I’m plummeting in the opposite direction, I’m a piece of s**t, and I really can’t do anything about it.”  More than ever after his devastating suicide in May 2017 in Detroit, it becomes more and more about the struggles Cornell faced on a daily basis before he lost the fight.

Well I’m feeling that I’m sober
Even though I’m drinking
Well I can’t get any lower
Still I feel I’m sinking

It’s a song that goes through Cornell’s negative energy before going to the chorus, where he assures us that he must remain optimistic since he will rise from his knees “’Til I’m up on my feet again.”  As bad as life can be, life is still an experience worth living.  And that leads us to the best song lyric Cornell ever wrote, the greatest song lyric of the year.  

Well I just looked in the mirror
And things aren’t looking so good
I’m looking California
And feeling Minnesota

Looking California and feeling Minnesota.  The ultimate lyric about self-loathing and hiding your true emotions.  Which is kind of fitting, thinking about it.  This song may be about self-pity, but it’s also the ultimate statement of grunge bravado with its unstoppable guitar riff.  And of course, I almost forgot about Chris Cornell’s vocals.  No singer in grunge was better than Cornell.  Layne Staley may have been my favorite grunge singer, but he’d never be able to pull off the heroic vocals Cornell performs in the song.   And then when he sings the “Oh!” notes in the final pre-chorus, it is just stunning.  Chris Cornell was a God.  We were lucky to have him whenor me, that is the genesis of “Outshined”: a song about finding glory and ecstasy in the worst, most dour situations.  It has become probably the song I’ve heard more than any other in the last one and a half years for a very good reason.  For the five minutes and eleven seconds “Outshined” lasts, no band on Earth was better.  I’m not discounting “Black Hole Sun” at all, as that too is a great song, but “Outshined” is perfect in every possible way.  “Outshined” is not just the actual best song of 1992 in all genres (Sorry Whitney Houston) and the greatest song Soundgarden ever made.  It sits along with “Iron Man,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and “Live Forever” as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.

UP NEXT: Now let’s begin the list proper with a feminist grunge anthem at #10.

SOURCES

Beato, Rick. “What Makes This Song Great? Ep. 62 SOUNDGARDEN (#2).” YouTube 2 May 2019. Web. 21 August 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P447H107TBA.

Friend, Lonn M. “Heroes… And Heroin.” RIP Magazine July 1992. Stargate.net. Web. 21 August 2022 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/rip_7-92.shtml.

Gold, Jonathan. “Chris Cornell, Searching For Solitude.” Details December 1996. Pitchfork. Web. 21 August 2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outshined#cite_note-5.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single cover from Discogs

Photo of Soundgarden from Classic Rock Review