According to TMZ, the surviving members of Soundgarden are battling Chris Cornell's widow, Vicky, claiming they are the rightful owners of seven unreleased songs Cornell was working on at the time of his death.
Last fall, Vicky Cornell sued Soundgarden, claiming they’re withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties she calls a "unlawful attempt to strong-arm Cornell’s estate into turning over certain audio recordings created solely by Chris before he passed away."
Not so fast, says Soundgarden in their court filing. The band insists they’d been working on the unreleased songs as a band as far back as 2014, and picked up again in the studio back in April 2017 then took a break to go on tour. A month later, Chris died of suicide by hanging one month later.
Guitarist Kim Thayil says the band hasn’t had much luck trying to rectify the situation. "We've asked nicely, we've suggested that this will benefit all parties, if the band could just have these files, and we could finish the songs we were working on. But there seems to be some confusion amongst various parties as to what that would entail and how that works, and who that would benefit."