this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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JAMS JAM JAMS JAM JAMS

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This is one of those posts where I don't mean for it to be bait whatsoever, I am being totally genuine here, but with the reaction I've gotten for stating this opinion throughout my life, I figured I'd start with thatI do not like Pearl Jam at all, save for a song or two I think are good, I like the song Black quite a bit and I heard another song I can't remember the name of once that I thought was alright. But every single time I try to listen to this band's discography, I hate it. At one point, I wanted to like Pearl Jam and listened to Ten a ton to try to acclimate myself to the album like I've done with many others I had an initial sour taste to. I thought it was annoying. If every band from the 90s is Red Hot Chili Peppers but more or less annoying on a spectrum, Pearl Jam is on the lower end of that spectrum. However, I still find Pearl Jam to be annoying and uninspiring.

Am I just too young to understand them? There are a lot of vocalists I don't understand that I like because of how they use their voice as an instrument, but I find how Vedder using his vocals absolutely indecipherable. Someone will hear some lyrics from him and be like "damn I felt that" when I didn't understand a goddamn word Vedder had said. I've listened to a lot of grunge, really love The Smashing Pumpkins and Dinosaur Jr. the most because I'm also a lover of dream pop and shoegaze. I should be okay with Veddar having indecipherable vocals, it just seems like they way he does it is stupid.

If you guys have any suggestions for Pearl Jam songs you think I'll like, feel free to comment them, I'm not going to just be a shithead. I'd also appreciate hearing what you guys specifically appreciate about the group or the song you comment. I feel like I'm missing so much context with how many people I like also being Pearl Jam fans, but maybe I'm not missing anything and other people also agree with how annoying they are?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They did free concerts and actively organised against Ticketmaster's efforts to suppress that, but yeah the music itself is reasonably trash. Silverchair did their sound better on Frogstomp, and they were still in high school at the time.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

They are actually better than pretty much every other grunge bands when it came to Ticketmaster. No other grunge band backed them because they thought Pearl Jam were sellouts and posers.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

Thank you for saying this. :there are dozens of us:

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Pearl Jam is really the pop rock equivalent to the 90s alt/ "grunge" scene. I feel like theyre more emblamatic of the whole post grunge movement more than anything.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

It’s ok to like Pearl Jam. It’s ok to not like them.

Maybe it has something to do with Singles. Who knows.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Have you tried vibing harder?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I've listened to every pearl jam album and i confirm they are mid at best

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I feel you. I hate Steely Dan. I respect the musicianship, they wrote extremely memorable licks, and they get stuck in my head for weeks if I listen to like 5 seconds of a song off "Aja." They're good at what they do and I get why people like them. But I don't. I hate having them stuck in my head. Be more forgettable, Steely Dan! You talented jazz-rock fuckers!

Sometimes bands just don't work for a person. Sometimes it's an entire genre. Sometimes it's just not the right time in your life and one day you'll like it. It's all valid, comrade. As a kid I hated opera and jazz. Now I love chilling out to some Miles Davis or cooking while listening to Pavarotti. party-parrot

As for Pearl Jam they're kinda grandfathered into my musical taste (older Millenial, Xennial, whatever you wanna call it) but basically just "Ten" as I sorta stopped listening to them as I got into the whole pop punk thing in the late 90s. Maybe I'll check out some of the suggestions in this thread - I might dig it now that I'm older.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Pearl Jam paved the way for Creed and I can never forgive Scott Stapp for putting out the lamest and most annoying songs of my childhood. Due to my hatred for Creed I must also sacrifice the yarls of Pearl Jam as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I also tried to get into Pearl Jam in high school since they were part of the grunge canon or whatever but I could only stand 2 of their songs enough to keep in my library because I had this embarrassing recurring fantasy that my crush would wanna listen to my iPod and be impressed with my music taste so I wanted to cover all my bases

Well that never happened and I don't really listen to grunge anymore aside from Alice in Chains

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Guessing Jeremy was one of them

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lmao got me. The other one was Black

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

They have songs other than Jeremy and Black????

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

based and hating white music pilled

they never should have let kkkrakkkers have guitars

Death to America

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I don't hate them but i understand why theyre called mid.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

So I like Pearl Jam, but sort of in the way that they're surprisingly okay for mainstream rock and the band to my knowledge isn't composed of sex criminals. I kind of get them mixed up with Foo Fighters on occasion, to such an extent that I had to check which band had a Black Metal side-project. It wound up being Grohl on that account. But like, if you don't like just hunting through their B-sides on Spotify, it might just not be for you.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

The [Pearl Jam] Stand in Jojo is pretty funny, so at least there's that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I agree with you and I’ll take it one step further - I don’t like most grunge.

I think the problem for me is grunge takes a lot of influence from hard rock and heavy metal, two genres I’ve never been big on. A lot of grunge bands are just too close to hard rock for me. I absolutely hear it in Eddie Vedder’s vocals. Maybe it’s something similar for you. You might try listening to some Pearl Jam precursors - Green River is a grunge band I really like. Temple of the Dog I never really listened to but they have that one cool song Hunger Strike. There’s also Mother Love Bone but I’ve never really listened to them.

You may also be reacting to the slew of derivative Pearl Jam copycats that popped up in the wake of the grunge explosion. Post-grunge is a genre that’s generally looked down upon, and I think a lot of those guys copied a lot from Eddie Vedder’s vocal style. It might be a case of you being more familiar with the derivative knock-off bands that Pearl Jam spawned, and only being able to hear those bands when you listen to Pearl Jam.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It might be a case of you being more familiar with the derivative knock-off bands that Pearl Jam spawned, and only being able to hear those bands when you listen to Pearl Jam.

This is my case, I can only ever hear Creed when I hear Pearl Jam

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I grew up on grunge/90s alt and with Pearl Jam but after all that was already over. To me it was always part of one big sweet ass era of music. I get not being into the yarling, but to me its great. I don't have to know what Veder is saying cause I can feel what he's going for. They have so many good songs to me but one underrated one imo is Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I really only listen to Even Flow by these guys.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I like Daughter and am not sure I’ve heard any of their other songs tbh

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When I was young and the only way to get music was CDs, I tried to like Pearl Jam as my experience was limited. At the time they were fine, but hell I'd never put them on now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

same

I got into them through the music video for do the evolution but listening to the song on its own now it's just eh

I don't think they're unbearable, but they're like the ac/dc of gen x, where some people hype them up so much because it was a popular band when they were young, but listening to it now, it's like "I wouldn't be annoyed if I heard this at a state fair"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I agree with almost everything you said, I could never get into them but everyone else loves them.

Although, in college I did really like the 'Into The Wild' soundtrack that Vedder did solo, but I haven't listened to that in years so I don't know if I'd still feel the same (Society is the song I remember the most).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Vedder sounds like he's doing a bad impression of Cobain, who had that sort of low grumble to his voice but it was more subtle and natural and you could feel it was coming from a place of genuine pain. but with Vedder it just feels like an affect he's putting on because he think it sounds cool. that phony grunge voice became so trendy and got even worse with post-grunge bands like Creed and Nickelback. Pearl Jam sucks but Creed makes Pearl Jam sound like Nirvana

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I kinda dig em but I know they're not for everyone. I mostly like em for the vibes, Vedder is incomprehensible (even as a fan I understand him maybe half the time) but the noise hits the right spots for my autism

I'd probably recommend songs where Vedder is a bit clearer: Sirens, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter, Hard Sun (Vedder solo stuff from Into The Wild), Daughter, or Dissident. But honestly some bands just don't click

I'm the same with Led Zeppelin. I respect the musicianship they have, and while on paper I should love them (and I love Greta Van Fleet who're basically a Zeppelin cover band) but there's something about Zeppelin that doesn't click for me

[–] vritrahan 4 points 2 months ago

Hey I love pearl jam and everything grunge. This is blasphemy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

This is one of those posts where I don't mean for it to be bait whatsoever, I am being totally genuine here,

Good luck lol, Pearl Jam is bad though fwiw.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not entirely Pearl Jam, but "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog (mix of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden members doing a tribute to one of their buddies who died really young) might be up your alley:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUb450Alpps

Growing up, I liked a fair amount of grunge, but Pearl Jam never made it on my radar until I was a grown-ass adult. In context of other bands from the early- to mid-90s, they're all right; Vedder brings an almost singer-songwriter vibe to the material (albeit a near-unintelligible one), and the instrumentation itself is nothing to write home about, which is why I find it so fucking funny that Mike McCready and Stone Gossard will always go full guitar nerd in interviews about how various songs were written/recorded. Eddie's a giant lib causehead, and is usually on the right side of things (e.g., encouraging concertgoers to help out people living in homeless encampments near concert venues), but I can't speak to any level of follow-through there. Regardless, Ten is about the only one of their albums that I'll regularly listen to. I think of it the same way that Chuck Klosterman describes the album Night Songs by Cinderella -- it's so exemplary of its genre that it could also be passed off as parody.

There is an old Eddie Vedder story where, very early in Pearl Jam's career, he overheard people singing lines from "Black" at the beach. He ran up to them and asked them to stop singing because the lyrics were too personal to him.

Sourcehttps://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-five-against-the-world-244637/2/

And one night, while sitting out on a deserted coastal sand bluff, contemplating life after the death of a friend, guitarist Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch, he heard strange voices coming from the hill behind him. They were singing “Black,” the fragile song that to Vedder had come to symbolize the overcommercialization of the band. He’d fought to keep it from getting overplayed, didn’t want a video made of the song. Vedder hiked out of the bushes to ask the surprised hikers not to sing the song. Months later, he still remembers their odd and concerned looks as they faced the angst-filled author of the song.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I hold no ill will towards anyone in pearl jam, by all regard they seem okay and have done some genuinely kinda cool not music stuff or related to .music with the ticket master rebellion. But wow do I absolutely hate their music visceral reasons and ones I could probably explain if need be. Also Jeremy had feels like a real exploitative song if they made a dime from it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I didn't understand a goddamn word Vedder had said.

Back in the 90s I was regularly buying newly released Pearl Jam albums and loving them. I couldn't tell you any of the lyrics, even the radio hits. Whatever the hell Eddie Vedder wanted to say will be a secret he takes to his grave.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

i dont even have a strong opinion on pearl jam, they are that band with that marble mouth baratone singer.

it's cool they fought ticketmaster tho.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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