“Pretty Noose” by Soundgarden

Soundgarden picked "Pretty Noose" to lead off their fifth album, Down on the Upside, sending it to US radio on April 30, 1996, and it announces itself with a woozy wah-wah guitar riff that coils around you before the band lurches in. Chris Cornell wrote it alone, and the band produced it with Adam Kasper, who also engineered and helped mix.

The best story belongs to Matt Cameron. The band thought they were only cutting demos, so he learned the song and played it through, and that take made the record. He had walked to the Seattle studio that day on tired legs and tried to put a walking feel into the part, which he reckons gave it its slightly odd shuffle. It climbed to number two on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and later landed on the 1997 hits collection A-Sides.

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