Core is the debut studio album by American rock band Stone Temple Pilots, released on September 29, 1992 through Atlantic Records. The album, which peaked at #1 on the BillboardHeatseekers chart and #3 on the Billboard 200, was certified 8x platinum by the RIAA on December 18, 2001, making it the band's best-selling album.
Recording
The first recorded track for the album, the 96 second "Wet My Bed", emerged from an improv session between vocalist Scott Weiland and bassist Robert DeLeo, who were alone in the studio. Producer Brendan O'Brien can be heard at the end of the track, walking into the room and saying "All right, now what?" The rest of the album was recorded in a matter of five weeks, after which the band decided on the name "Core", referring to the apple of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve.
Composition
Core, as a debut album, displayed the band's attempt to revive the album-oriented music approach of the 1970s. Striving to create an intense and emotional sound, vocalist Weiland has said that the main theme of the album is that humanity is confused, with songs like "Sex Type Thing" and "Naked Sunday" dealing with social injustice. "Sex Type Thing", according to Weiland, deals with abuse of power, "macho" behavior, and humanity's attitude toward women, treating them as sex objects. "Naked Sunday", according to Weiland, "is about organized religion. About people who tell others what to do and what to believe. They switch off people's minds and control the masses. It gives me a feeling of isolation, when I think about it. Organized religion does not view everyone as equals." Further explaining his lyrical style on Core, Weiland was quoted as saying: "Wicked Garden"'s lyrics deal with the loss of innocence and purity, while "Sin" addresses "violent and ugly" relationships. The song "No Memory", a musical interlude between "Wicked Garden" and "Sin", was written by guitarist Dean DeLeo.
Reception
Don Kaye of Kerrang! praised the band's "confidence and identity", unusual in debut albums. However, the album still received mixed reviews overall. Music journalists often blasted the band as "rip-offs" of grunge acts such as Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. Entertainment Weeklys Deborah Frost wrote that "Stone Temple Pilots' hit 'Sex Type Thing' could be Mike Tyson's rape defense transcribed into grunge rock. It's unclear whether STP, which sounds like it has crash-landed Pearl Jam into Alice in Chains, is condemning or identifying with its narrator. With a real point of view, this band could be bigger than an accident." Paul Evans of Rolling Stone concluded that "inner child of Stone Temple Pilots is Iron Maiden, and that kid just won't quit howling". Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, felt that the band is hard to distinguish from various other hard rock acts and said that, despite their best power chords, "Sex Type Thing" shows that they should "reconceive their aesthetic strategy—critiquewise, irony has no teeth when the will to sexual power still powers your power chords." The sharp divide between the band's growing fanbase and their critics was evident: in the midst of the album's success, the band was simultaneously voted Best New Band by Rolling Stone's readers and Worst New Band by the magazine's music critics in January 1994. Regarding the album's initial reception, Weiland told Entertainment Weekly in 2008, "It was really painful in the beginning because I just assumed that the critics would understand where we were coming from, that these just weren't dumb rock songs". The album is ranked number 983 in All-Time Top 1000 Albums. "Plush" won the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. Stone Temple Pilots also won the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist award at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards.
Legacy
Several of the album's songs remain rock radio staples in the United States. In October 2011, Core was ranked number ten on Guitar World magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1992. In 2019, Rolling Stone ranked the album at #11 on its list of the "50 Greatest Grunge Albums." On July 26, 2017, Stone Temple Pilots announced that a 25th anniversary edition of Core would be released on September 29, 2017. The reissue includes a 25th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition box set, an exclusive Core 25th Anniversary T-shirt, and Core 25th Anniversary 16″ x 20″ lithograph. The Super Deluxe Edition's 4CDs present a remastered version of the album, previously unreleased demos and b-sides, and parts of three live performances from 1993, alongside the remastered album on a single LP and a DVD including a 5.1 surround sound mix and videos for the album's four singles.
Track listing
All lyrics written by Scott Weiland, except where noted.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes Stone Temple Pilots
