Chris Cornell’s “Euphoria Mourning”
I first heard the hit single “Can’t Change Me” by Chris Cornell on the radio when I was a high school senior back in 1999. Class of 2000 represent! It was such a cool song, I bought the CD soon after and found a guitar magazine with a transcription of the song, so I picked that up too. When I sat down with the guitar and the magazine to play through the chord changes, I was shocked at the song’s difficulty.
Chords rarely lasted longer than a few beats and always had numbers and signs on them. The chord changes also seemed to ignore standard diatonic keys. There were several G minor with C7 and D7, Eb major and minor, Bb over Ab then A7… How come the other songs on the radio didn’t have these chords? I was intrigued by Cornell’s songwriting right away.
It turns out the whole album is like this, and even more strange. The second song, Flutter Girl, is a work of genius. The chorus is based on a descending sequence of whole tones and weird chromaticism. The third song, Preaching the End of the World, has such a strong melody and dark, dystopian lyrics. The further I got into the album, the more new chords I was discovering on the acoustic guitar. By the time I’d heard the song Sweet Euphoria, I knew this was no ordinary album.
Fast forward twenty years and I’m still listening and loving Euphoria Mourning. My appreciation for the album has also evolved. The older I got, the more astonished I became at Cornell’s vocals. Singing along in the car felt like an exercise in futility; the more I sang along, the worse I sounded. And some of these songs are so freaking fantastic, you just want to belt them out with him, which adds insult to injury. Songs like Disappearing One, Pillow of Your Bones, and Steel Rain have such catchy hooks, you want to participate but you’re gonna wanna keep it to yourself.
In 2007, I got all excited about his follow-up album, Carry On. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very good. And then Scream came out in 2009. Also not good. I don’t think I even tried listening to his 2015 release, Higher Truth, out of fear that I’d just see Euphoria Mourning as a one-time stroke of genius. Then he died in 2017 and I was wrecked. I didn’t realize how much this album meant to me.
So, to give you a sense of the craziness of these songs, let’s play through some of the chord changes on a few of them.
Can’t Change Me is pretty straightforward compared to the other songs, so let’s start there.
Flutter Girl
V: E Am E C+ C#m C#m/B C A E/G# G A7 E
C: E D C Bb AbM7 G7 Eb F, again end on A7
B: Eb7 D7 Ab7 G7 Eb7 D7 A
Follow My Way
C: Bb F Bb Dm A E B E Ab add9 Eb7
Disappearing One
V: E E/G# Am Em/G F# F E D Am
PC: Am Am/G Am/F# B7
C: C G/B Am E/G# 2X
F D/F# E/G# Am C/G F Fm/C Bb C
Pillow of Your Bones
V: Cm Ab/Eb G7/F D#m/F# F
PC: B Badd11 A#sus4 A#
C: D#m D D#m D F# Bm Bb7
