Welcome everyone to something I’ve been jumping back and forth on for a while: Top Five Fridays!
If you’ve ever watched the movie “High Fidelity”, you know that a lot of the talk around the record store revolved around top five lists (you might even say they were the original BuzzFeed). Even John Cusack’s character had a top five list of all the breakups he had in his life.
With this being the first edition of the Friday Top Five, what better direction to go than with one of the best musical acts in the last twenty years in Pearl Jam? Without any further preamble, let’s get into the top five Pearl Jam songs
5. Yellow Ledbetter
When you look at some of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits in terms of mainstream appeal, this has to be the song that pops up in people’s heads. One of the biggest reasons why was because it was used in the series finale of Friends when Rachel gets on the plane.
What’s really crazy about this song was originally left on the cutting room floor on their debut album and was originally only a B-Side (for those too young to remember or know what a B-Side is, it’s the other side of a vinyl album). It has a unique history to it and one of the best parts is trying to figure out what exactly Eddie Vedder is singing about.
4. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
When I decided to do this, I dove into the discography of the group and re-discovered several songs that I had completely forgotten about. This is one I heard a lot as a teenager and never remembered the title. Now that I know that I’ve seen this, it makes sense why this song faded out of my mind for a while.
Back when I was younger, it was far from my favorite Pearl Jam track because of my preferences for hard rock. However, this jumped up from the original rankings because it feels like a genuine story is being told and feels like something Vedder experienced.
3. Just Breathe
Much like Elderly Woman, this became a personal favorite of mine as I’ve gotten older. It wound up getting into the list largely because of having this song on loop after what happened in the summer of 2015. It’s just what I needed to hear after everything that happened.
Everyone has their place to escape from all the world’s troubles and music has always been that escape and also a perfect soundtrack to life. This is what you need to hear when you’re feeling like life gets to be too much and you need to, as the song says, just breathe.
2. Even Flow (Original; Not remastered)
I love when songs wind up getting remastered. However, this is the one song I can’t stand hearing the remastered version. There’s something about the grunge sound is taken away when you listen to the remastered version that turns me away from ever hearing that version of the song. While there’s some cool additions like when Vedder starts talking as the song wraps up, the remaster still turns me off for a few reasons.
All this being said about the remastered version, the original version is the superior largely because of the guitar riffs sounding better. Maybe I’m thinking too much into it.
1. Better Man
That haunting intro is what makes me love it. It reminds me a lot of when a symphony orchestra begins to tune up their instruments. Then Eddie Vedder starts singing about how a woman (presumably his mother) and how she can’t find a better man.
It’s just a perfect track from one of my all-time favorite bands.
-Clint@1063RL