Pearl Jam/Tear Jerker

This grunge band can really make you cry.

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• "Black". In almost any other group's "hands" this would be just a cheesy and wangsty song about Unrequited Love, but Vedder and Co. make it work.

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be the sun of somebody else's life...
Why, why, why can't it be, oh, can't it be mine?

• And "Jeremy". It's about a guy who committed suicide in the middle of his English class.

Daddy didn't give attention
Oh, to the fact that Mommy didn't care.
King Jeremy the Wicked,
Oh, ruled his world.

• And "Even Flow". About a homeless, illiterate, mentally insane man.
• One can get really depressed listening to "Given to Fly".
• "Yellow Ledbetter". The melody alone is pretty fucking depressing...
• "Immortality" is a Kurt Cobain tribute that deserves a mention.
• "Last Kiss" (originally performed by Wayne Cochran, more famously performed by this band) is either this or Narm.
• "Present Tense" can get some people choked up.
• "O4/20/02" was written and recorded hours after a distraught Eddie Vedder had learned that his friend Layne Staley of Alice in Chains was found dead due to an OD from a speedball (A 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.

"So sing just like him, fuckers,
It won't offend him,
Just me...

Because he's dead."

—Eddie Vedder 04/20/02

• • "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.
• "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.

"Lost 9 friends we'll never know... 2 years ago today"

• • When the line is performed at live concerts, the last bit is changed to the number of years since June 30, 2000.
• The dreary, almost suicidal atmosphere of "Sad" can really choke some people up -- especially the chorus:

"And there's no reason that she'd passed"
"And there is no god with a plan, it's sad"
"And his loneliness is proof, it's sad"
"He could only love you, it's sad"

• Also: "Man of the Hour", and "Just Breathe".
• For tears of joy, "Alive".