Line #64 TearJerker/PearlJam


1	[[Music/PearlJam This grunge band]] [[TearJerker can really make you cry]].
2	----
3	* "Black". In almost any other group's "hands", this would be a [[{{Narm}} cheesy]], {{wangst}}y song about UnrequitedLove, but Vedder and Co. pull it off.
4	-->I know someday you'll have a beautiful life\
5	I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky\
6	But why, why, why can't it be, oh, can't it be mine?
7	** All the times the band performed this song live in 2000 are harder to listen to when you know that it was year Eddie divorced his first wife.
8	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmKAkVfvgA This version with just Eddie]], just weeks after the death of Chris Cornell and dedicated to him, gives the song a whole new meaning. By the time he gets to the last few lines of the song, he completely breaks down.
9	* Less better known than "Black", are "Alone" and "Hold On", which are more about how LoveHurts:
10	-->Wide awake and he shakes in a panic\
11	Never woke up alone ever before...
12	-->I know\
13	Life could've been different\
14	If I held on...
15	* "Jeremy", the [[BasedOnATrueStory true story]] of Jeremy Delle, a teenager who [[DrivenToSuicide shot himself]] in front of his English class.[[note]]Eddie Vedder mentioned that it was also partially inspired by a friend of his who went on a violent rampage in fifth grade.[[/note]]
16	-->Daddy didn't give attention\
17	Oh, to the fact that Mommy didn't care.\
18	King Jeremy the Wicked,\
19	Oh, ruled his world.
20	** And the video having the {{bookends}} of weather reports was meant to convey that in the end, nothing changed.
21	* "Jeremy"'s DistaffCounterpart, "Daughter", is about a young girl with dyslexia whose parents don't understand her problem, and treat her harshly thinking she's just lazy or rebellious.
22	* And "Even Flow". About a homeless, illiterate, mentally insane man.
23	* One can get really depressed listening to "Given to Fly".
24	* "Yellow Ledbetter". The melody alone is pretty depressing...
25	* "Immortality" is a Kurt Cobain tribute that deserves a mention. Reading the lyrics alone is enough to choke you up:
26	-->"As privileged as a whore,\
27	Victims on demand for public show,\
28	Swept out through the cracks beneath the door..."
29	* If you don't find it too cheesy, their [[CoveredUp cover]] of "Last Kiss" is absolutely miserable. The sparse, listless way the band plays the DooWopProgression behind Eddie just sounds so broken.
30	* "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O7jmmSYI9U Present Tense]]" can get some people choked up.
31	* "04/20/02" was written and recorded hours after a distraught Eddie Vedder had learned that his friend Layne Staley of Music/AliceInChains was found dead due to an OD from a speedball (heroin and cocaine cocktail). In the song Eddie laments for the wasted talent of Layne and feels utter rage for recent musicians copying his vocal style.
32	-->''So sing just like him, fuckers,\
33	It won't offend him,\
34	Just me...\
35	Because he's dead''
36	* "Indifference", which is about Vedder basically giving up. Saying that nothing he does in the long run matters, no matter how much he wants it too.
37	* "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town", where the titular woman recognizes an old flame of hers from her youth but chooses not to call out to him as too much time has passed since. The song ends with the implication that she's suffering from dementia, destined to die in the small town she grew up in and never left.
38	* "Love Boat Captain" was written in response to the 2000 Roskilde Festival disaster, when 9 people suffocated due to the crowd pressure at a Pearl Jam concert.
39	-->"Lost 9 friends we'll never know... 2 years ago today"
40	** When the line is performed at live concerts, the last bit is changed to the number of years since June 30, 2000.
41	** There's plenty of footage and photos from the Roskilde concert available, and almost all of them show an utterly distraught Eddie Vedder trying to get people to move back and help people up who had fallen to the ground. It's quite a tear jerker knowing that at that point it was already far too late. Hell, just listening to the audio of Vedder's increasingly desperate pleas to the audience to move back and give room to those who had been trampled, and those trying to help, will bring tears to your eyes. [[note]]Per the official police report, 18 minutes elapsed from the point where the crowd crush turned dangerous, and until Pearl Jam's tour manager communicated to the band that they needed to stop the concert.[[/note]]
42	* The dreary, almost suicidal atmosphere of "Sad" can really choke some people up -- especially the chorus:
43	-->''And there's no reason that she'd passed\
44	And there is no god with a plan, it's sad\
45	And his loneliness is proof, it's sad\
46	He could only love you, it's sad''
47	* "Sad" is about a man mourning his dead love. The flip side of the song, "Other Side", is even more moving - it's about his lover, who is in Heaven (the titular "other side"), but cannot rejoice because she still misses him.
48	-->"It's not the same without you here..."
49	* Also: "Man of the Hour", and "[[GriefSong Just Breathe]]".
50	* The sequel to "Man of the Hour", "[[GriefSong Come Back]]" - a young man's lament for his dead father - manages to outdo its predecessor.
51	* And while we're on the GriefSong track, there's the underappreciated gem "Light Years" - a song about a friend of the band who died young, regretting that they couldn't have had more time with her:
52	-->"I've come up with riddles and jokes about war,\
53	I've figured out numbers and what they're for,\
54	I've understood feelings and I've understood words..\
55	[[WhamLine But how could you be taken away?"]]
56	* For tears of joy, "Alive". It's actually not a happy-to-be-alive song at all, though it's often interpreted that way. [[WordOfGod Eddie Vedder]] puts it this way: "[He's] still dealing with love, [he's] still dealing with the death of [his] father. All [he] knows is 'I'm still alive'... that's totally out of burden... In the original story, a teenager is being made aware of a shocking truth that leaves him plenty confused... It was a curse - 'I'm still alive.'" But, due to how many people have misinterpreted it, he adds: "They lifted the curse. The audience changed the meaning for me."
57	* This also happened with "Rearviewmirror". The original song was about a young woman who is DrivenToSuicide by being abused, but Eddie Vedder has stated in later interviews that it's about escaping abuse and rising above its effects.
58	* "Garden" and "Release" from Ten.
59	* "Given To Fly", which is nothing short of exhilarating; it's supposed to evoke a fable or a picture book, but it's ''epic as hell'' nonetheless. Starts off as a TearJerker, ends up as a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.
60	* "The End" is about being terminally ill, and self-evidently qualifies for this.
61	* "World Wide Suicide", a lament for a dead American soldier in the Iraq War [[WarIsHell (and on the futility of war in general)]], can count as this.
62	* "Army Reserve", with lyrics co-written by Damien Echols (one of the accused in the controversial "West Memphis 3" case), is about a soldier's wife who tries to comfort her child, though she is nearing her DespairEventHorizon herself.
63	* "Better Man" is about a woman forcing herself to endure a loveless (and possibly abusive) relationship because she doesn't think she can do better. Eddie Vedder has said that "it's dedicated to the bastard that married my Momma."
64	* "Sirens". Whether you want to read it as a love song, a reflection on mortality, or a heartfelt apology and dedication to one's children, the lyrics managed to reduce the ''band members'' themselves to tears when they first heard them.
65	* After Music/ChrisCornell's death in 2017, [[LastOfHisKind Eddie Vedder is the last Grunge frontman from the 90’s still around]].
66	* At the 2018 Oscars, Vedder performed a heartfelt solo version of Tom Petty's "Room At the Top," not only as a tribute to those in the film industry who had died the previous year, but also as a tribute to Petty himself who had also recently passed away.
67	* "Comes Then Goes", Vedder's tribute to his old friend Chris Cornell.
68	-->Is this you? Here I stand\
69	Intense recollections of pain, self-neglecting again\
70	Like you, I keep it in\
71	Thought you found a game where you could win\
72	It’s all vivisection in the end
73	* "Retrograde" is about the perils of global warming and how the world isn't doing enough to tackle it.

Context TearJerker / PearlJam