Rusty Cage (4:26)

“Rusty Cage” is a song by the American rock band Soundgarden. Written by frontman Chris Cornell, “Rusty Cage” was released in 1992 as the third single from the band’s third studio album, Badmotorfinger (1991). The song became an instant hit and was released as a single in several different formats. The song was included on Soundgarden’s 1997 greatest hits album, A-Sides.

On “Rusty Cage” the bottom E string is tuned all the way down to B, with Thayil stating that “the string was all wobbly but it had a good effect.” The song features a striking tempo change towards the end of the song, going from using 4/4 in its chorus to a repeated pattern of 3/4, 2/4, and 5/4 in its coda. Thayil has said that Soundgarden usually did not consider the time signature of a song until after the band had written it, and said that the use of odd meters was “a total accident.”

“Rusty Cage” was written by frontman Chris Cornell. Guitarist Kim Thayil on the song:

The tuning on that song was pretty nutty. It’s recorded with a wah wah in the low position used as a filter. That was the first time we did anything like that. It was Chris’ idea; he wanted to get that weird tone that you can’t really dial in on an amp. But if you use the wah wah as a filter, it gets an incredibly weird sound. And if you listen to that riff, especially if you’ve heard the original demos of it, it almost sounds backward.