Chris Cornell^†

Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label, which in 1989 still felt like selling out. It didn't stick to them because nobody else was making music that sounded like that. Superunknown (1994) cracked the mainstream with 'Black Hole Sun' on endless MTV rotation, but the real proof of his stature came three years earlier, when he spent 15 days recording a tribute album for his dead roommate and accidentally launched Eddie Vedder's career. Temple of the Dog barely sold on release. Then Pearl Jam happened, and it became a classic.

The legal story didn't end with the autopsy. In 2018, his widow filed a malpractice lawsuit against a Beverly Hills doctor who'd reportedly prescribed him more than 940 doses of lorazepam in his final 20 months without ever conducting a physical exam. The family settled confidentially in April 2021. The posthumous releases kept coming: a covers album he'd finished before his death got nominated for Grammys, and 'When Bad Does Good' won Best Rock Performance in 2019. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Soundgarden in 2025, with his daughter Toni performing 'Fell on Black Days' at the ceremony.

He started in Soundgarden as the drummer, not the frontman. A bad PCP experience at 14 locked him inside his house for close to a year, barely speaking to anyone. His mother gave him a snare drum during that stretch. The four-octave baritenor voice that eventually made him famous came from someone who'd nearly dropped out of the world entirely. He also wrote the Casino Royale Bond theme in 2006, the first American male to do so, which still feels slightly unbelievable given where he started.

At his Los Angeles funeral, Chester Bennington sang Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', then died by suicide two months later. Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture unveiled a bronze statue in 2018. A tribute concert at The Forum in January 2019 featuring Metallica and Foo Fighters raised money for the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation.