Soundgarden was an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington in 1984 by lead singer and drummer Chris Cornell, lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Matt Cameron later became the band's permanent drummer in 1986 and bassist Ben Shepherd later became a permanent replacement for Yamamoto in 1990. Soundgarden was one of the key bands in the creation of grunge music, a musical style that developed in Seattle and was based around their record label Sub Pop. Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label, but they did not achieve commercial success until Seattle contemporaries Nirvana and Pearl Jam popularized grunge in the early 1990s.

Soundgarden achieved its biggest success with the 1994 album Superunknown which debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and yielded the Grammy Award–winning singles "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman". In 1997, the band broke up due to internal strife over their creative direction.

Soundgarden was a seminal seattle rock band who helped to define the sound that came to be called grunge . Despite starting years earlier, and having a sound that more closely resembled Black Sabbath or Deep Purple than their contemporaries, they are usually considered one of the ‘big four’ of the ’90s Seattle grunge bands, along with Alice in Chains , Nirvana , and Pearl Jam . They were ranked number 14 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. History The band was formed in 1984 by C