Stone Temple Pilots are one of the most beloved bands of the Nineties alt-rock explosion, and at their core, they are also one of that generation‘s most chameleon-like musical acts.
Take a look back at their catalog — especially the classic lineup’s six-album, 10-year run with iconic vocalist Scott Weiland — and you’ll find anything from grunge-yowled ballads, to dirge-y blues metal, to Zeppelin-worshiping classic rock, to grim-hearted country, to wiry funk, to bubble-crunch power pop.
Naturally, this makes ranking the STP songbook no easy feat, but we asked Revolver readers to weigh in with their picks for the band’s single greatest cut. Below are the top five vote-getters.
5. “Sex Type Thing”
While most folks’ first impression of Stone Temple Pilots was arguably mega-hit “Plush,” “Sex Type Thing” was the band’s actual debut single, and it made for a mean-sounding introduction.
Though immediately driven by an aggressively in-your-face, oversaturated Dean DeLeo guitar riff, it’s the sinisterly sneering, first-person growl Weiland affixes to the at-the-time misunderstood anti-rape song that seers itself into your brain. STP rarely sounded as scary as this.
4. “Interstate Love Song”
Across the 12 gracious melodies of 1994 sophomore album, Purple, few felt both as simultaneously back-porch-hangout-friendly and utterly massive as “Interstate Love Song.”
The song starts off gently enough with some empty-Bud-bottle slide guitar and a couple simple strums, but then the full band start surging through a feel-good, Southern-styled travel anthem that’s no doubt set off a million road trip sing-alongs in the 30 years since first coming out.
3. “Dead & Bloated”
Weiland famously sang straight into Dean DeLeo’s hot-wired guitar pickups to track the fuzzy vocal intro to Core’s opening “Dead & Bloated.”
As for the song, it’s a fittingly rough-around-the-edges, swagger-heavy blues-metal monstrosity where the singer keeps fever-dreaming his way through sad-sack analogies of himself being something like a deathbed flower, or the kind of thing you find on the sole of some other guy’s shoe.
An auspicious start, but STP wouldn’t stay the underdog for too long.
2. “Trippin on a Hole in a Paper Heart”
A panicked, but funky standout from STP’s third album, Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, “Trippin on a Hole in a Paper Heart” is an acid-dipped classic based on a “bad trip” of Weiland’s.
Dean DeLeo’s pre-chorus guitar accents sound like they’re cribbing Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days” — a song STP had already covered by that point, mind you — while Weiland starts expressing himself with a raspier, high-range-hitting vocal tone than on the band’s earliest records.
His lines clearly resonated quite personally: Weiland based the title of his 2012 memoir Not Dead & Not for Sale on the chorus.
1. “Big Empty”
While initially appearing on the eternally great soundtrack for 1994’s The Crow, “Big Empty” also acted as a preview for the then-impending Purple, and the gloom-cast grunge ballad had fans positively salivating for whatever was next.
In some ways, “Big Empty” is kind of the inverse of “Interstate Love Song.” While both lead with some slippery slide work, the latter tumbleweeds itself into a hopeful melody. “Big Empty,” by contrast, sounds like it’s been burdened and beat down by the world a billion times over. But sometimes the only way to fill a hollow in the soul is with a blast of melancholy distortion like this.