"Through Glass" by Stone Sour, Thursday, October 27, 2022

Heavy metal music is quite scary to many people even without the visuals. But add the visuals and the backstory along with titles like "Raining Blood," you've got a genre of music that's pretty great for Halloween. But then you add the macabre images of  classic acts like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne or Nu Metal giants like Rammstein or Rob Zombie, metal is horrifying. Stone Sour isn't a shock metal group, but cofounder and lead singer Corey Taylor left the band in 1997 to replace Slipknot's original frontman, and became known for an outrageous, downright brutal stage image. 

DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME HAS PAST. In 2000, Stone Sour reunited, and Corey Taylor fronted both Stone Sour and Slipknot concurrently. While Slipknot released some of their heaviest music, Stone Sour had radio rock singles. The band released their debut self-titled album in 2002 with the single "Bother," which was on the Spider-Man soundtrack, though Corey Taylor was the credited artist on the soundtrack. In 2006, Stone Sour released their sophomore record, Come What(ever) May.  Like the band's first record, Come What(ever) May was a hard rock/ alternative metal album, featuring baleful bass-lines, gravel vocals, and angry explicit lyrics. But there were some quieter, albeit moody moments on the band's sophomore record. "Sillyworld" is a sardonic acoustic-driven, politically-motivated track that earned the band a number 2 hit on the Rock charts. The final track, "Zzyzx Rd." is a love song to Taylor's wife and mentions overcoming addiction and getting out of a place of depression. But track 8, "Through Glass," is Stone Sour's biggest hit, reaching number 1 on the rock charts. The acoustic rock track is unlike anything else on the record, and because of this song that I had heard on the radio, I checked out the brutal rest of the record. 

IT'S THE STARS THAT LIE TO YOU. Corey Taylor wrote "Through Glass" when he was in Sweden. More specifically, he wrote the song about his thoughts when he experienced an inability to change the European MTV station because he was suffering from food poisoning. Taylor told The Gauntlet:

        I was sitting in a European hotel room watching a music video channel, seeing act

        after act after act of this insane, innocuous, plastic music. They were plastic,

        bubbly, gossamer-thin groups where it was really more about the clothes they

        wore and the length of their cheekbones than it was about the content of the song

        they were singing. It really made me mad. I was like, "Is this it? Have we just gone

        full circle? Did the singer/songwriter revolution never happen? Is it just the same

        drivel from the same replicate over and over again?

The video also takes a jab at big music production, showing how artificial modern music has become. Taylor suggests that the music industry has just become cameras and props, all of which disappear after reporters leave. I doubt that Taylor would have positive things to say about the state of pop music in 2022, but thanks to streaming platforms, music is more individualized to the listener's particular tastes today. There are many artists who are taking back the reins, though the music industry has cut costs as new music doesn't make much money. But does artists driving their own sound make music more authentic? Or are artists just chasing algorithms?

Read the lyrics on Genius.