Welcome to another search for the worst album of all time here on Broken Records. Steve and Remfry really don’t want to be here this week as they are covering an album by one of their heroes; the late, great Chris Cornell and his third studio album Scream released on the 10th of March 2009. 

Cornell had become a legit mainstream star in the mid 00’s after his cover of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson was being karaoke-massacred by X-Factor contestants and his song You Know My Name being an actual Bond theme! Not bad for the singer in an alternative rock band that had split a decade earlier. Being hot stuff he decided to rope in pop producer extraordinaire Timbaland, he of the sublime work of early Jay-Z, Missy Elliott and Justin Timberlake’s banger filled Justified album, to work on some new material. An odd pairing? Maybe on paper, but then Cornell has a voice of such stunning quality that he would easily be able to pull off pretty much any genre right? Sure, but by this time Timbaland was working with the likes of New Kids on the Block, Black Eyed Peas and The Pussycat Dolls, and it was tempting to say that the pop revolution that he helped kick-start in the early part of the decade was starting to sound a little stale and oversaturated in 2009. What we got was an album that plays to neither man’s strengths, despite the two enthusiastically telling the press how great it was to be working with each other and both the rock and mainstream worlds looked at Scream like a middling half-way house that neither rocked like Cornell’s early material or made you want to get up and dance in the way that Timbaland at his best could. A shame, but then we got Soundgarden back for a few years in the aftermath, so was it really all that bad?

Videos

Chris Cornell - Scream (Official Music Video)

Chris Cornell - Part Of Me ft. Timbaland (Official Video)

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