Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor has revealed that he began releasing solo music as he felt he wasn’t getting the credit he deserved for writing with his two bands.
Speaking to Paste Magazine to promote his recently released sophomore solo album ‘CMF2’, Taylor – who was a member of Stone Sour before Slipknot – spoke of the “misconception around who was writing what for what band”.
“When Stone Sour first started, not only was I playing guitar constantly, but I was also the lead guitarist and main writer. Honestly, one of the reasons why I was very adamant about starting my solo thing is that there was a weird misconception around who was writing what for what band,” Taylor said.
Taylor said on the Stone Sour front: “Maybe this is where my ego comes into play, but I felt like I wasn’t getting the credit for the things I was actually writing. With Stone Sour, it was fairly obvious, but there were a lot of songs that I wrote that people thought [guitarists] Jim [Root] or Josh [Rand] wrote where that wasn’t the case at all.”
Going on to explain about similar experiences within Slipknot, Taylor said: “With Slipknot, there was a lot of stuff that either wouldn’t have been written without me, or that I wrote that other people gave [themselves] credit [for]. As someone who takes great pride in sitting down and creating something from nothing — just from my imagination — that stuck in my craw.”
Now, with his solo music, Taylor feels like he’s “setting the record straight and changing the narrative.” As he puts it, he’s “showing people that, ‘Oh yeah, he does write heavy shit. And country shit. And acoustic shit. And piano shit. And rock shit. Hardcore shit’ – the gamut.”
Taylor added: “I’ve never shied away from giving credit to the people who deserve it. I’ve never taken credit for anything that I didn’t do, and I’ve always been the first to shine the spotlight on anybody else. I don’t necessarily get that in return.”
Corey Taylor released his sophomore solo record ‘CMF2’ last week (September 15). The record scored three out of five stars from NME‘s Jordan Bassett, who wrote: “There’s enough good stuff on here to justify the album’s existence. And if nothing else, it’s a fascinating insight into the dichotomy that drives one of the greatest bands of the 21st century.”
