On the other hand, maybe it just made the great songs seem that much greater. Vitalogy was sometimes incredibly frustrating, because it clearly had the best set of songs they’d ever written, and while the pisstake experimental tracks is a grand tradition going back to The Beatles, I’m not sure they needed to sabotage themselves with four on side two. So while they recorded it for Vs., it apparently didn’t come out too well, so when they got a version they liked, they stuck it on the back half of Vitalogy, in the middle of all of the weird experiments like “Bugs” and “Aye Davanita,” in order to … fuck, I don’t know what. Which, apparently, was the problem: it was a bit too pop for what they wanted to do with Vs.

With a universally-accessible lyric and a melody line cribbed from the immortal “ Save It For Later,” there was no doubt that “Better Man” was a great pop song.

Written by a teenaged Eddie Vedder sitting alone in his San Diego bedroom, “Better Man” is almost a perfect encapsulation of the struggles that Pearl Jam were having with themselves over their stardom.

Songs by pearl jam