CHRIS CORNELL – No One Sings Like You Anymore (2020)

“No One Sings Like You Anymore” is the fifth and final studio album by CHRIS CORNELL, just released posthumously without prior announcement by his estate and Universal Music. It consists of 10 covers selected, sequenced and recorded by Cornell in 2016.
It’s an eclectic collection of songs chosen by Cornell to celebrate artists and music that inspired his own work, ranging from Guns N’ Roses ‘Patience’ to Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ (made famous by Sinéad O’Connor), Janis Joplin, Electric Light Orchestra, etc.
It’s really impressive Cornell’s ability to perform these songs in his own style, all quite different from the originals and giving a fresh, new feeling to them.

It takes audacity to turn a song like “Get It While You Can” — a gospel-tinged fable by Howard Tate and later a jaunty blues-rock pearl for Joplin — into a practically unrecognizable, squeaky, synthy number, as Cornell does here. He sings the song soulfully like Tate and belts the chorus like Joplin, but the shuffling keyboard-heavy arrangement makes it feel like something new.

Similarly, it takes guts to attempt a song like GN’R’s “Patience” and turn it into lonely ballad with electronic sounds and weeping acoustic guitar. Even gutsier: He didn’t even whistle.
Cornell, who performed all of the album’s music alongside producer Brendan O’Brien, makes Lennon’s “Watching the Wheels” peppier than the original with an upbeat acoustic riff, and when he sings the lyric, “I tell [people] there’s no problems, only solutions,” he sounds hopeful and not didactic the way Lennon did.

He belts ELO’s “Showdown” as if it were “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” And he gives a Bowie, Blackstar edge to the best song on the album, “You Don’t Know Nothing About Love,” a slow-simmering soul number popularized by Carl Hall that B.B. King turned into a bloated Elvis-style number, with an expressionistic horn arrangement that builds with Cornell’s shrieks.

All instruments on ”No One Sings Like You Anymore” were played by Chris Cornell and Brendan O’Brien, who also produced & mixed the album.
In time for the holidays, the album is a special gift for Chris’ fans, but the Cornell family hopes that new fans and listeners will be inspired by Chris’ powerful and unique voice in these stunning renditions.
Although the late Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman’s vocal talents are undeniable, the way he performs the covers on this compilation is what makes it really interesting.
Highly Recommended

01 Get It While You Can (Janis Joplin cover)
02 Jump Into the Fire (Harry Nilsson cover)
03 Sad Sad City (Ghostland Observatory cover)
04 Patience (Guns N’ Roses cover)
05 Nothing Compares 2 U (Prince cover)
06 Watching the Wheels (John Lennon cover)
07 You Don’t Know Nothing About Love (Carl Hall cover)
08 Showdown (Electric Light Orchestra cover)
09 To Be Treated Rite (Terry Reid cover)
10 Stay With Me Baby (Lorraine Ellison cover)

Pre Order;
www.chriscornellmerchandise.com/
www.amazon.com/One-Sings-Like-You-Anymore/dp/B08PPJFMV4