“Hands All Over” by Soundgarden

"Hands All Over" comes from Soundgarden's second studio album Louder Than Love (1989) and went out as its second single in 1990, later turning up on the Loudest Love EP, the A-Sides hits set and the Telephantasm compilation. Kim Thayil wrote the music and Chris Cornell the words, and Terry Date produced it with the band before Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero mixed it.

Thayil has called it a one-note, one-chord riff that gets all its power from dynamics and layering, and that's the thrill: Matt Cameron and the guitars keep leaning on the same slab until it feels like a landslide. Cornell pointed the lyric at the environment, at people wrecking what was fine to begin with, and he howls it like a warning nobody wants to hear.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.