Noah Weiland Pays Tribute to Father Scott With Cover of Stone Temple Pilots’ Sex Type Thing’

Noah Weiland, the son of late Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, has paid tribute to his father with a cover of 1993’s “Sex Type Thing.”

Released on Thursday (Feb. 20), the haunting rendition of the track sees Noah offering up a faithful take on the original, albeit without the angry vocals that Scott included over 30 years ago. Featuring production and additional guitar from Spencer Carr Reed, the cover also comes accompanied by a video which sees Noah making his way throughout Sherman Oaks, CA alongside a Chucky doll which represents the elder Weiland.

The video features subtitles which see Noah reflecting on the loss of his father. “There was so much I wanted to tell him, like how much has changed on Earth without him,” one caption reads, while a final caption adds, “I wish I could dream about you forever. But it’s ok…because for now I will carry on your legacy.”

“Filmed this about a dream I had long ago about seeing my father again,” Noah wrote about the track on social media. “It’s hard for me to stay in the moment sometimes, but I try.”

Scott Weiland passed away in December 2015 at the age of 48, with an autopsy later declaring his cause of death as an accidental overdose of cocaine, ethanol and methylenedioxyamphetamine. Scott first rose to fame in the ’90s as the frontman of Stone Temple Pilots, who officially formed in 1989 as Mighty Joe Young.

The band’s debut album, Core, was released in September 1992, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. “Sex Type Thing” was issued as its lead single in early 1993, and would peak at No. 23 on the Album Rock Tracks (now called the Mainstream Rock) chart. Second single “Plush” would also win them a Grammy Award for best hard rock performance.

Stone Temple Pilots would split in 2003 after releasing five albums (including 1994’s chart-topping Purple), though would reunite in 2008 and release a self-titled record in 2010. Scott Weiland would be fired from the band in 2013, with Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington taking over as lead vocalist until 2015.

In 2016, the band launched a search for a new vocalist, ultimately announcing Jeff Gutt as their new singer in November 2017. The band have since released two studio albums with Gutt, with their most recent being 2020’s Perdida.

That same year, it was revealed that Noah Weiland, along with the sons of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, had formed a band called Suspect208, though the group would only last for a year before splitting.

In April 2024, Noah revealed he was being “blackmailed” by an unnamed individual who demanded $2,000 to refrain from leaking a demo titled “Time Will Tell”, which featured previously-unreleased vocals from Scott. Noah instead decided to finish the song with Reed, telling Rolling Stone the idea was to present the track as a familial collaboration.

“Due to the fact that nobody who ‘represents’ my dad actually cares to give the fans new unheard music, let alone keep his name alive in the first place, my friend Spencer Carr Reed and I decided to turn it into a more modern sounding song as if he was still alive and just decided to hop on one of my songs,” Noah explained at the time. “That was the concept behind it.”