Vitalogy

Certain Songs #1509: Pearl Jam – “Better Man”

April 12, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Vitalogy
Year: 1994

Written by a teenaged Eddie Vedder sitting alone in his San Diego bedroom, “Better Man” is almost a perfect encapsulation of the struggles that Pearl Jam were having with themselves over their stardom.

With a universally-accessible lyric and a melody line cribbed from the immortal “Save It For Later,” there was no doubt that “Better Man” was a great pop song. Which, apparently, was the problem: it was a bit too pop for what they wanted to do with Vs.

Certain Songs #1508: Pearl Jam – “Corduroy”

April 11, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Vitalogy
Year: 1994

My favorite Pearl Jam song, bar none.

And as much as I love songs like “Leash” and “Black” and the upcoming “MFC,” it ain’t even close: “Corduroy” speaks to me deeply on both a musical and personal level, and I think it’s not just the best song that Pearl Jam has ever done, but one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever recorded about the effects of fame on musicians.

This all seems quaint in an era where people will pretty much do anything to become famous, but a quarter-century ago there was a whole coterie of big rock stars who really hated being big rock stars. And so quite naturally, Time Magazine did a big story about this group of reluctant rock stars — pegged around the near simultaneous releases of In Utero and Vs. and the massive success of Siamese Dream — and stuck Eddie fucking Vedder on the cover.

And he hated it.

Certain Songs #1507: Pearl Jam – “Nothingman”

April 10, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Vitalogy
Year: 1994

One of my favorite jokes in This is Spinal Tap comes when filmmaker Marty DeBergi points out to manager Ian Faith that while previously the Tap had been playing 10,000-15,000 seat arenas, on the Smell The Glove tour, they were playing venues 1/10 of that size. So he naturally wondered if that meant that their popularity was waning.

Faith takes a second, and then replies: “No. No, no, no, no, no. Not at all. I-I-I just think that their appeal is, uh, becoming more selective.”