Chris Cornell (1964, Seattle, WA, United States) is an American singer/songwriter and guitarist.

In 1984 he formed the band Soundgarden with bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Throughout the late 80's and 90's, Soundgarden experienced major success as one of the four major grunge bands (along with Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam).

In 1990, Chris Cornell worked together with the (then) Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, and Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready (who would later form Pearl Jam) in a project named Temple of the Dog. They wrote a 10 song album as tribute to Andrew Wood, the singer of Mother Love Bone who had died the year before of a heroin overdose.

In 1997 Soundgarden split amicably at the zenith of their popularity and Chris began a solo career. He released the sucessful album "Euphoria Morning". Out of this album came the single "Can't Change Me".

When Zack De La Rocha left Rage Against the Machine in 2001, Chris Cornell joined the instrumentalists of Rage Against the Machine to form the band Audioslave.

In 2006 Chris recorded a theme song for the James Bond 007 movie, "Casino Royale," titled "You Know My Name", which is used as the opening song.

In the fall of 2006, Cornell started recording his second solo album Carry On, with producer Steve Lillywhite. Among some fellow artists who are expected to accompany him on his second solo release is friend and legendary musician Gary Lucas, who has contributed acoustic guitar to some of the tracks. Cornell has stated that he is always writing, and that there are some songs that he was not able to put into an Audioslave album. "Carry On" was released in the summer of 2007.

On February 15, 2007, Chris Cornell issued a statement that he was leaving, shortly after Morello, Commerford and Wilk reunited with their former vocalist Zack de la Rocha to reform Rage Against the Machine. This put Audioslave's future into question and the remaining members are yet to announce whether they intend to continue performing with another singer or together as a band at all.