First a fictional Brian Eno starts a Twitter brawl with Alan McGee and now Trent Reznor is micro-blogging some hurt at former tour-mate Chris Cornell. Only this time the diss is real.
"You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly YOU feel uncomfortable?" the Nine Inch Nails front-man tweeted yesterday (March 12). "Heard Chris Cornell's record? Jesus."
That Cornell record Reznor is referring is Scream, the former Soundgarden/Audioslave singer's new solo effort. Like Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado before him, Cornell made this record with hip-hop production guru Timbaland and needless to say, it's quite the departure for the one-time flannel-wearer. Scream comes fully loaded with slicked-up synths, skittering digi-beats and, yes, even Auto-tune, making any links to "Rusty Cage" or "Outshined" damn near non-existent. Seriously, here's just a sample.
And while Cornell has yet to respond to the NIN man (yesterday's only post from Cornell said, "I pushed for another day for $2.99 per album download on Amazon so check it!"), a lot of other people are apparently sharing Reznor's sentiments. In the L.A. Times' recent review of Scream, the newspaper said it was "a fascinating but heartbreaking document of how many wrong decisions one can make in writing and performing a record." And over at Rolling Stone, the magazine said "Scream feels like it belongs in a time capsule."
But as a new Reuters article points out, "Cornell is savoring the outrage."
The singer told the news agency: "That part's kinda fun. If someone is up in arms about the idea of an artist that they really care about doing something that they just can't believe, it begs that question, 'Well, what is it that you would want? Would you then want predictable, comfortable salad that gets reproduced year after year?'"
He also goes on to call Scream "an interesting sociological experiment," saying people are more concerned about who is making the music rather than the music itself.
"That feeling of going out and really having to prove it, to perform new music where it's not going to be unanimously loved... there's some excitement that I got out of that that I haven't felt in years," Cornell says.
Yes, "not going to be unanimously loved," that seems to be a bit of an understatement.
"You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly YOU feel uncomfortable?" the Nine Inch Nails front-man tweeted yesterday (March 12). "Heard Chris Cornell's record? Jesus."
That Cornell record Reznor is referring is Scream, the former Soundgarden/Audioslave singer's new solo effort. Like Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado before him, Cornell made this record with hip-hop production guru Timbaland and needless to say, it's quite the departure for the one-time flannel-wearer. Scream comes fully loaded with slicked-up synths, skittering digi-beats and, yes, even Auto-tune, making any links to "Rusty Cage" or "Outshined" damn near non-existent. Seriously, here's just a sample.
And while Cornell has yet to respond to the NIN man (yesterday's only post from Cornell said, "I pushed for another day for $2.99 per album download on Amazon so check it!"), a lot of other people are apparently sharing Reznor's sentiments. In the L.A. Times' recent review of Scream, the newspaper said it was "a fascinating but heartbreaking document of how many wrong decisions one can make in writing and performing a record." And over at Rolling Stone, the magazine said "Scream feels like it belongs in a time capsule."
But as a new Reuters article points out, "Cornell is savoring the outrage."
The singer told the news agency: "That part's kinda fun. If someone is up in arms about the idea of an artist that they really care about doing something that they just can't believe, it begs that question, 'Well, what is it that you would want? Would you then want predictable, comfortable salad that gets reproduced year after year?'"
He also goes on to call Scream "an interesting sociological experiment," saying people are more concerned about who is making the music rather than the music itself.
"That feeling of going out and really having to prove it, to perform new music where it's not going to be unanimously loved... there's some excitement that I got out of that that I haven't felt in years," Cornell says.
Yes, "not going to be unanimously loved," that seems to be a bit of an understatement.
