Best Pearl Jam Songs

Stereogum counts down the best Pearl Jam songs.

I won't quibble with #1, because "Corduroy" would also be my choice. 

When I think of everything I want to hear in a Pearl Jam song, it sounds like “Corduroy.” The foreboding opening notes, the emphasis of that verse guitar part when it first hits, the way the choruses are actually calm reprieves hiding between the unbridled verses, the moment where those foreboding opening notes return after the final verse, and the way they lead into the cascades of distorted chords that the song rides out on — everything about the structure of “Corduroy” is perfect. It’s a band at the peak of their powers, able to deftly ratchet up drama, let it loose, bottle it back up, and then do that all over again a few times over in the course of four and a half minutes...Every couplet seems to be one of their most recognizable lines, starting with that “The waiting drove me mad…” opening straight through to “Can’t buy what I want because it’s free/ Can’t be what you want because I’m…” denied its closure. And, as a bonus it has their most recognizable misheard line — “Everything has changed/ Absolutely nothing’s changed” instead of “Everything has chains/ Absolutely nothing’s changed.” There’s no doubt that all this is specific to Vedder’s life and specific to a very ’90s version of celebrity vs. the machine, but there’s something about it that makes it still very resonant today. In a broad sense, the lyrics of “Corduroy” are an earnest attempt at maintaining some sense of individual identity, its music a back and forth between being subsumed and breaking out. For any of us as listeners, it’s easily applicable to the heavy dose of mediation with which we live our lives on a daily basis nearly two decades after the song’s release, Vedder’s anxieties about his celebrity not altogether different from the sort that could be produced by living through all sorts of digital representations. “Corduroy” has that kind of timeless power, that kind of impeccable craft — it’s in “Gimme Shelter,” “Born to Run” territory. When I think of what it was that made Pearl Jam my first favorite band, it sounds like “Corduroy.” When I think of everything I want out of music, it sounds like “Corduroy.”

And I like many of the other choices...Rearview Mirror, I Got Id, In My Tree, Not For You (not my fave), In Hiding, Who You Are, Given to Fly, Undone, and Light Years are all great.  But like several commentators, I would add Yellow Ledbetter to the list. And I personally love Better Man. And Black and Elderly Women are both excellent, of course.