An article by Far Out Magazine explores the two rock frontmen that late Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell believed he could never emulate: Queen's Freddie Mercury and Alice Cooper. Cornell, whose powerful, wide-ranging voice was frequently likened to Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, drew on the physicality and force of 1970s rock singers without adopting the full "rock star" persona that came with it, a stance rooted in his punk sensibilities. The piece reflects on how Cornell balanced classic-rock vocal power with a more grounded, unvarnished stage presence.

Cornell told Louder magazine that Mercury and Cooper were "proper rock stars" who were "really cool, really entertaining, larger than life people," but said adopting that theatrical persona himself would have contradicted his punk grounding. While Mercury commanded stadiums through performance and showmanship and Cooper built macabre theatrical spectacle, Cornell's equivalent was his voice alone. The article notes that Soundgarden, despite Seattle's punk-adjacent underground scene, still produced offbeat tracks like 'Kickstand' and 'Circle of Power', underscoring Cornell's unusual position as a singer with classic frontman vocal talent but too much integrity, in the writer's view, to become a theatrical caricature.