Soundgarden have released the official footage of their September Seattle performance, giving fans their first full look at the band’s return to the stage with Taylor Momsen and Mike McCready.
by Paul Cashmere
Soundgarden have released official footage of their September 9 performance at Seattle’s Lumen Field, finally giving fans outside the stadium a full view of the band’s return to the stage with Taylor Momsen on vocals and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready on second guitar.
The performance took place during halftime of the Seattle Seahawks’ NFL season opener against the New England Patriots, with Soundgarden performing “Outshined” and “Spoonman” in front of their hometown crowd.
For viewers watching the game at home, however, the performance was largely absent from the television broadcast. The release of the official footage now provides the complete performance in professionally filmed and recorded form.
The lineup brought together three surviving members of Soundgarden, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd, with two musicians who have strong connections to the band’s Seattle history. Taylor Momsen, frontwoman of The Pretty Reckless, has previously performed Soundgarden songs with the band, while Mike McCready brings another key Seattle connection as a founding member of Pearl Jam.
The choice of Momsen was already familiar to Soundgarden followers. She first performed with the band at the 2019 I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell concert in Los Angeles, where she sang “Rusty Cage”, “Drawing Flies” and “Loud Love”.
Momsen returned to the Soundgarden camp for the 2022 Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, performing “Black Hole Sun”, and again in 2025 when Soundgarden were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. She has also spoken publicly about her connection to Chris Cornell and Soundgarden, making her involvement in the Seattle performance a continuation of an established musical relationship rather than a one-off guest appearance.
The Lumen Field set was deliberately brief, with “Outshined” followed by “Spoonman”. Both songs connect directly to Soundgarden’s most commercially significant period.
“Outshined” was first released on Badmotorfinger in 1991, the album that established Soundgarden as one of the leading bands of Seattle’s emerging alternative rock scene. “Spoonman” followed on Superunknown in 1994, an album that reached number one on the Billboard 200 and produced two Grammy-winning singles. The official Soundgarden catalogue identifies both songs among the key recordings from that period.
The second song also provided a distinctive visual and musical addition to the performance. Seattle’s Blue Thunder Drumline, the Seahawks’ 32-piece drumline, joined Soundgarden for “Spoonman”, bringing the NFL setting directly into the arrangement.
The performance also represents another chapter in Soundgarden’s attempts to continue performing after the death of Chris Cornell in 2017. The band played eight songs at the 2019 Cornell tribute, while Momsen joined them again in 2022. In 2024, Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd performed a six-song set at Seattle’s Showbox under the name Nudedragons, with Shaina Shepherd handling vocals.
The Lumen Field appearance therefore became another carefully selected opportunity for the surviving members to revisit the Soundgarden catalogue without attempting to simply recreate the original lineup.
It also follows Soundgarden’s 2025 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, giving the 2026 performance an additional place in the band’s post-Cornell history. The official Soundgarden website continues to maintain live information for future dates, although no further live performances are confirmed here.
Away from the stage, Soundgarden have also been working on recordings featuring vocals Chris Cornell recorded before his death. Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron have previously discussed the completion and mixing of that material, suggesting that the Lumen Field performance is occurring alongside an ongoing effort to develop previously recorded Cornell material into a new Soundgarden release.
For now, the official Lumen Field footage stands as its own document of the band’s latest live chapter. With Taylor Momsen handling Cornell’s vocal parts, Mike McCready adding another Seattle guitar voice and the Blue Thunder Drumline turning “Spoonman” into a distinctly hometown performance, Soundgarden have preserved a moment that many television viewers never got to see.
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