The Songs That Helped Define Pearl Jam

Bands that touch the hearts and souls of people around the world are truly timeless. The music world has given us plenty of bands that can touch hearts, which is great, but few stand above the rest. There's something about Pearl Jam's music that has touched people for decades across the world. No matter their differences, bands such as Pearl Jam and music, in general, can bring people together.

While Pearl Jam has plenty of fantastic songs out of the 1990s, there are a few that really helped define the band. These songs stand out and are simply perfect snapshot of Eddie Vedder and company.

Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame inductees and trailblazers Pearl Jam have sold over 85 million albums around the world, according to their official website. "Thirty plus years of live performances, twelve studio albums and hundreds of official live concert bootleg releases later, the band continues to be critically acclaimed and commercially successful," the site adds. Pearl Jam's latest album is Dark Matter, which arrived on April 19, 2024.

Pearl Jam truly helped bring grunge music to the masses in the early 1990s, along with bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, and continue to be a popular alternative rock band today. The original members of the band were lead vocalist Eddie Vedder, rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament, lead guitarist Mike McCready and drummer Dave Krusen, and while drummers have changed, the rest of the band has remined in place.

"Pearl Jam came into being in Seattle in 1990 when Gossard and Ament of the glam-influenced rock combo Mother Love Bone decided to form a new band following the death of their group's lead singer, Andrew Wood," Britannia notes of the group's early history. "The band was originally named Mookie Blaylock, after a professional basketball player, but the group settled on the words pearl and jam separately—the latter reportedly after seeing musician Neil Young in concert and admiring his 'jam session' style."

On the Rock Hall's official website, they describe Pearl Jam's humble beginnings. "When they released their debut album, Ten, in August, 1991, Pearl Jam were a band of young unknowns to anyone not from Seattle, Washington," they note. "At home, Pearl Jam were practically a supergroup-founded in 1990 at a crossroads of classic rock, Seventies heavy metal and hardcore punk, just as that city’s underground scene was about to go worldwide."

While there were a lot of bands that were part of the Seattle sound movement, Pearl Jam really stood out. "A lot of Seattle bands practiced in a lot of Seattle basements," The Seattle Times notes in a feature published on 2017. "But in the short time from Vedder's arrival in Seattle on Oct. 8, 1990, to the release of “Ten” on Aug. 27, 1991, Pearl Jam relied on hard work and talent to set itself apart in an exploding Seattle music scene."

"Even Flow"

Now, all of Pearl Jam's defining songs that we're talking about are off Ten. You can disagree, but this album is really the band's landmark release. Ten is one of the most important albums of the entire grunge movement. The songs on this record simply appealed to the masses a bit more than the raw punk of Nirvana or darkness of Alice in Chains, although all of the big grunge bands really did appeal to the mainstream.

"Even Flow" is one of those defining songs. According to Genius, the song is "a narration of the life of a homeless person" and it was "a favorite for many, including Matt Cameron (who was Soundgarden's drummer at the time)."

In an interview with The Line of Best Fit, Cameron said, "I distinctly remember hearing the chorus for 'Evenflow' and thinking that's HUGE" and that "it's got a really rad Zeppelin huge rock feel to it." Cameron added, "Although we've played it a couple of thousand times since I've been in the group I think that's the quintessential Pearl Jam song. Even though it gets played out, the nuts and bolts of that song are just amazing."

"Jeremy"

"Jeremy" is another raging rocker that really helped define Pearl Jam. According to Medium, Pearl Jam drew inspiration from a tragic event, in which a 15-year-old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle killed himself in front of his classmates. "Before putting the revolver in his mouth and pulling the trigger, those who went to high school with Delle had little to say about him after his passing because Delle had just transferred to the high school three months prior to taking his own life," Medium notes.

Vedder discussed in a 2009 interview his feelings after reading about the boy's death in the newspapers. "It came from a small paragraph in a paper, which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge," Vedder said, according to Pop Culture References. "That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper."

He added that "The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back."

"Alive"

"Alive" is another hard-hitting rock number that's one of Pearl Jam's best. This song was very personal to Vedder. It "tells the story of a young man discovering that his father is actually his stepfather, while his mother’s grief leads to an incestuous relationship with the son, who strongly resembles the biological father," according to Genius.

SongFacts adds that "Alive" actually dates back to Gossard's previous band, Mother Love Bone. "He wrote the music and lead singer Andrew Wood wrote some lyrics - at the time the song was called 'Dollar Short,'" they note.

Mother Love Bone disbanded after the passing of Andy Wood, and Gossard brought it to Pearl Jam. "Eddie Vedder's lyrics went in a direction the band didn't expect, but they loved what they heard and quickly agreed that he should be their lead singer - only one other guy had been auditioned," SongFacts adds.

So, these are some of the most important songs in the history of Pearl Jam and continue to be legendary songs today.