Chris Cornell's widow Vicky sues Soundgarden over royalties

Chris Cornell’s widow, Vicky Cornell, is suing Soundgarden over unpaid royalties and the rights to seven unreleased songs.

As TMZ reports, Cornell has filed a lawsuit, claiming that the band are withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties owed to her and her family. The conflict stems from a collection of several unreleased songs.

The lawsuit details that the band made “unlawful attempt to strong-arm Chris’ Estate into turning over certain audio recordings created by Chris before he passed away.” Cornell claims that the songs, which were the final recordings made by Chris, were “solely authored by Chris; contain Chris’ own vocal tracks; and were bequeathed to Chris’ Estate” to benefit his family.

However, in a letter that the banned penned to Vicky, they claimed that they were “working on the files in a collaborative effort” and that “the entire band was feeling very positive about their rekindled artistic energy and creativity” before the passing of Chris.

“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,” Guitarist Kim Thayil told Music Radar. “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. And it’s been tiring, you know. And we can’t move on until some future date when someone realizes the value of allowing the creative partners to have access to the material.”

In other news, Toni Cornell, the daughter of the late Soundgarden frontman, released her first original song back in September. ‘Far Way Places’ was produced by Chris in his home studio in February 2017. Toni penned the single when she was 12 years old, and it was one of the last songs to be recorded by her father before his tragic passing. You can listen to it below.