Image Courtesy of 42 WestEarlier this year, Chris Cornell contributed his vocals to the song "Heavy Is the Head" by country group Zac Brown Band. As it turns out, the Soundgarden frontman almost returned to the country well for "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart," the lead single from his forthcoming solo album, Higher Truth.
"Originally it was going to be a country song," Cornell tells Kerrang! of "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart." However, he took the single in another direction because he "didn’t like the sound of it."
"I tried to get more personality out of it to make it warm from beginning to end," Cornell explains. "I looked back, changed it, and added the mandolin part, which became the thread through the whole song."
Lyrically, Cornell describes "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart" as the "opposite" of Soundgarden's 1994 single, "Fell on Black Days."
"['Fell on Black Days'] is like, ‘Everything's going wrong, I'm having an awful time in my life but I can't really point at any specific reason why,'" he says. "I think both of those things happen, but 'Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart' kind of points out the really great one -- the one that I think that people need to wait for when they're considering jumping off a bridge. Because anything can happen."
Higher Truth is an acoustic based album, and Cornell will embark on an acoustic tour in support of the record starting September 17 in Phoenix. He previously staged an acoustic tour in support of his entirely unplugged live album Songbook.
"[The acoustic Songbook tour] ended up being a great experience for me, so I wanted to write new material that really, essentially, makes this a living thing instead of just a nostalgia thing," Cornell says. "I think that's helped start to, in some way, create a solo Chris Cornell identity musically, whereas previously I think what I was trying to do was avoid having solo identity."
Higher Truth will be released on September 18.
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.