In Canada, the song reached the top ten on the Canadian Singles Chart on 6 March 1995. It appeared on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 Airplay chart, reaching the top 20. The song spent a total of eight weeks at number one on the Mainstream Rock chart.
The song reached the top of Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, number two on their Modern Rock Tracks chart, and number 13 on their Top 40 Mainstream chart in 1995. "Better Man" became the most successful song from Vitalogy on the American rock charts. ( July 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Īlthough never released as a single, "Better Man" nonetheless became one of Pearl Jam's most-played songs on the radio in the U.S. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification.
Lyrics Īl Weisel of Rolling Stone called the song a "haunting ballad about a woman trapped in a bad relationship." When "Better Man" was performed on VH1 Storytellers in 2006, Vedder introduced it as a song about "abusive relationships." Before a performance of the song at Pearl Jam's show on Apin Atlanta at the Fox Theatre, Vedder clearly said "it's dedicated to the bastard that married my Momma." He was referring to his stepfather, Peter Mueller, a California attorney whom Vedder had long believed to be his biological father and who divorced his mother in the early 1980s. It took us to the next record, recording it two more times, before he became comfortable with it because it was such a blatantly great pop song. I may have even sabotaged that version but I won't admit to that. I remember saying to the engineer, Nick, "This is one of their best songs and they're going to give it away! Can't happen!" And we went to record it and I'm not going to say we didn't try very hard, but it didn't end up sounding very good. We cut it once for Vs., he wanted to give it away to this Greenpeace benefit record, the idea was that the band was going to play and some other singer was going to sing it. I immediately knew I'd just said the wrong thing. One of the first rehearsals we did they played it and I said "Man, that song's a hit." Eddie just went "uhhh". There's a great song we recorded for Vs., "Better Man," which ended up on Vitalogy. Producer Brendan O'Brien said of the song: Vedder later recorded it with Pearl Jam, although Pearl Jam was initially reluctant to record it and had initially rejected it from Vs. He first performed it with a San Diego, California–based group called Bad Radio, with slightly faster tempo but altogether quite similar to the Vitalogy rendition. He said, "I wrote 'Better Man' before I could drink-legally-on a four-track in my old apartment." In another interview, Vedder stated, "Sometimes I think of how far I've come from the teenager sitting on the bed in San Diego writing 'Better Man' and wondering if anyone would ever even hear it." He did so alongside the members of the band.The song was written by vocalist Eddie Vedder when he was in high school. The producer of this Pearl Jam classic is Rick Parashar. Led Zeppelin’s famed “ Stairway to Heaven” took the number 1 position on the aforementioned list.
Sony) from releasing “Black” as a single. And the reason they did so is because they thought the business side of the industry, such as a music video for instance, would take away from the song’s meaning.īut as aforementioned, this did not prevent it from blowing up. Indeed in 2011 readers of Rolling Stone voted this song the ninth ‘Best Ballad of All Time’. Indeed it was Pearl Jam themselves who prevented Epic Records (i.e. “Black” went on to peak at number 3 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. This was a pretty amazing feat considering that the song was never released as a single. It was actually Gossard who first conceptualized this song as an instrumental. He included it as part of a project entitled “Stone Gossard Demos ‘91” which he put out in the name of attracting a drummer and singer for the band. And said tape is actually what led to E. Pearl Jam members Eddie Vedder and Stone Gossard wrote this classic, with the former handling the lyrics and the latter, the music. This song can be found on Pearl Jam’s first album, which is entitled “Ten”. And Epic Records released it with the rest of that project on 27 August 1991.