The Love Song That Took Chris Cornell 12 Years to Write, “Josephine”

While on the phone with then-new girlfriend Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornell started thinking of a new song, but all its pieces would need more than a decade to come together. The song was about Vicky being his future wife, under the guise of another woman’s name, “Josephine.” After years of reworking and writing, Cornell released the ballad on his fourth and final solo album Higher Truth in 2015.

“I sang ‘Josephine’ to Vicky from the telephone before we were married,” remembered Cornell, who also had her in the chorus. “I was going to ask her to marry me and the first indication was me singing her that song.” The two originally met in Paris in 2003, married in 2004, and went on to have two children together, daughter Toni and son Christopher Nicholas before Cornell’s death in 2017.

Cornell initially recorded a version of “Josephine” for his second solo album Carry On in 2007 as an instrumental with guitar and drums, but the song still wasn’t ready. “I wasn’t happy with it,” he said. “I was sort of surprised I wasn’t happy with it. When I was writing for this album, and near the end of finishing it, I kept remembering it and knowing there was a great song in there.”

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‘Won’t you come and marry me?’

Lyrically, the song centers around the longing for a partner who is meant-to-be—Won’t you come and marry me? / I got every kind of love that you would ever need / Dying here on bended knees.

“The sentiment was very raw and real and immediate—writing it to someone I wanted to be my future wife that is now my wife and mother of my children,” said Cornell. “Finishing that thought may be one of the more satisfying moments I’ve had in songwriting my whole life.”

Josephine where can you be now?
Again the sun is rising on my troubled heart
Don’t deny you know you and I
Are the making of what fate
Just can’t pull apart

My sweet Josephine
Won’t you come and marry me?
I got every kind of love that you would ever need
Dying here on bended knees

Sheets of rain
Cold and gray
Run down the page
Just about your name
With just the weight of your silent smile
Crashing all around me while I screamed it out loud

Cornell added “The song worked out. It just took a long time to get there. Maybe I was too nervous about it. Maybe it meant too much to me in the beginning. I was overthinking it. I didn’t let it just flow out.”

Like a raven in a cage
Blood on my birth
Just won’t wash away
Like a stitched-together doll
My feet to the flame
As I follow the blame
For someone else’s pain
For someone else’s pain

Rivers of black ink flood
A tapestry of flesh and blood around my frame
A living shrine just for you of human mind
Golden pen upon your hand
Leave this endless winter behind

There was a another level of revelation for Cornell on his solos album, which he called the “diaries” of his life in a 2015 interview.

“I’ve always said that my albums are the diaries to my life,” said Cornell in 2015. “I’m not one of those guys who looks out the window and sees something, then goes and runs home and writes about it. It’s more constant observation. I’m not a big talker and I’m sort of constantly looking and thinking, and then I remember odd things.”

He added, “I might not remember the list of things you would, I might not remember the things my wife would, for example, but I’ll see things that show up later. As I’m sitting and writing a song I find that it sort of becomes about that.”

Photo: Chris Cornell at the 2014 Lollapalooza Brazil, Autodromo de Interlagos on April 6, 2014, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)