You definitely can't listen to mainstream music if you want to hear anything with substance. I refuse to believe rock is dead, just in a hibernation period, it has to come back ;)
Actually, my brother broke away from his normal Folk/blues sound to do a tribute song for Chris Cornell. It's more a ballad, but I still think you'd appreciate it. I'm probably going to post about it, since it's the first song from his new album that he's released, but I'm going to drop it to you first: