First things first: Despite reports, Chris Cornell is not laying the groundwork for a Soundgarden reunion before his first solo album has been released.

That’s the word from Cornell, who recently made a casual comment that the door wasn’t exactly closed on the Seattle rock band’s getting together again… maybe… someday.

"That was a fun couple of days," Cornell says, laughing at the way his remark was blown out of proportion. "I was getting a lot of faxes, one of a headline saying ‘Soundgarden Re- Forming!’ And right under it was a quote from me saying that we never said it was impossible, but we never discussed it. It could loom in the future- five years, 10 years, 30 years. The point I wanted to make was just that it wasn’t one of those hell- freezes- over situations where anyone had a serious falling out."

With that situation clarified, Cornell is now free to focus on launching the new chapter of his career, a path that the singer, his manager, and his record company hope will see him moving into the world of Britney Spears, Ricky Martin, and ‘N Sync. Don’t get the wrong idea. There’s nothing on Euphoria Morning, due in stores Sept. 21, of a remotely teen- pop nature. Some songs, such as the expected first single "Can’t Change Me," will hardly alienate Soundgarden fans. But there are new directions that, his team believes, could move him beyond the world of alternative rock and possibly into the Top 40 radio playlists.

"Soundgarden enjoyed tremendous success at rock radio and alternative radio as well as MTV," says his manager, Jim Guerinot. "But now I think he can be played on Top 40 as well as VH1, especially in light of seeing things like Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth, which would have been considered alternative not long ago, now on Top 40."

Tom Whalley, president of Interscope Records (which took over Cornell’s album when his longtime home, A&M Records, was folded in earlier this year), believes the track that will do it is "Preaching the End of the World," an acoustic ballad with a melody reminiscent of John Lennon and lyrics about longing for personal contact and emotional intimacy.

"By starting with a song like ‘Can’t Change Me’ you have something more like what Soundgarden fans would expect, but at the same time shows growth and movement," Whalley says. "But this album is a little more about songs [than Soundgarden was] and there’s a lot less misgiving about taking a broader approach to the marketplace. And you can do that without alienating his audience."

Cornell had little of this on his mind when he started work on the album. At 34 and after 12 years in Soundgarden, he simply felt there were things he wanted to do that he couldn’t inside the band. First he started writing on his own last year and then recruited Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider, the core of LA band Eleven, to play on and co-write some of the material, with Cornell and Johannes producing.

"Soundgarden was always somewhat equal in terms of instruments on any given song and the vocals were a fourth instrument," says Cornell. "If there was a goal here it was that vocals and lyrics would be the focus."

The difference will be more clear in concert.

"The idea with this record is that people won’t be coming to smash into each other so much as it is people coming to hear the songs," Cornell says, noting that he won’t be playing any Soundgarden songs and will be booking sit- down theaters. "I’m really looking forward to that."

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