Classic Soundgarden Song Sees Spike in Popularity After Eclipse

A classic Soundgarden song saw a spike in popularity this month following the total solar eclipse, causing the band to land on a rock chart for the very first time.

You guessed it — it's "Black Hole Sun."

Featured on their 1994 album Superunknown, "Black Hole Sun" was Soundgarden's very first No. 1 on the Rock Songs chart, and also won them a Grammy award in 1995 in the Best Hard Rock Performance category.

Now, the song is seeing a surge in popularity again. Billboard reports that the song was streamed 4.2 million times between April 5 and 11, which is 34 percent more streams than usual. In that window it was also up 19 percent in radio airplay and sold 1,000 downloads, a 166 percent increase, according to Luminate.

Thus, "Black Hole Sun" debuted at No. 1 on the Hot Hard Rock Songs chart the week of April 20, making it the band's first time to ever place on the chart. The track also landed at Nos. 13, 15 and 19 on the Hot Rock Songs, Hot Alternative Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, respectively.

These spikes are obviously due to the total solar eclipse, which took place on April 8 and was seen across North America. The phenomenon occurs when the moon completely covers the face of the sun — thus, "Black Hole Sun" is a perfect description of what it looks like.

The video also saw a bump on YouTube thanks to the eclipse, landing at No. 32 on the platform's Daily Top Music Videos Chart on April 8.

"I wrote it in my head driving home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, a 35 to 40-minute drive from Seattle. It sparked from something a news anchor said on TV and I heard wrong... I thought that would make an amazing song title, but what would it sound like?" late frontman Chris Cornell told Uncut in 2014.

"I spent a lot of time spinning those melodies in my head so I wouldn’t forget them. I got home and whistled it into a dictaphone," he continued. "Then I wrote the lyrics and that was similar, a stream of consciousness based on the feeling I got from the chorus and the title."