Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Billboard | (mixed) |
| Boston Globe | (mixed) |
| Entertainment Weekly | (B+) |
| Hot Press | (favorable) |
| New York Times | (mixed) |
| NME | |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Robert Christgau | |
| Spin | |
In the U.S, the album debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200 and thus became Cornell's first top 10 solo album. The next week it dropped 55 places to number 65, which was the largest second-week drop for a top 10-debuting album in two and a half years. It was also a commercial disappointment, spending only 10 weeks on the Billboard 200.
Initial critical response towards the release was mixed to negative. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 42, based on 19 reviews. Scream received positive reviews from Entertainment Weekly and Hot Press who felt that the collaboration between producer Timbaland and Chris Cornell worked. The mixed reviews were more prevalent, with Spin stating the album was "strangely appealing in its elaborately empty efficiency." while Billboard noted that "Sometimes it's good bizarre. Other times it's bad bizarre." Rolling Stone wrote that Scream "veers between drab–sleek and rock–dude soulful; Cornell's yowl never sounds at home". Among the negative reviews, Allmusic wrote that "Scream is one of those rare big-budget disasters, an exercise in misguided ambition that makes no sense outside of pure theory."
Nine Inch Nails vocalist Trent Reznor attacked the album, condemning it as "embarrassing" on Twitter.
Read more about this topic: Scream (Chris Cornell Album)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)