have filled arenas around the world for decades to follow? Would they have made it even to No Code, let alone Riot Act? Or would they have been dropped and forgotten long before those points? It's pretty amazing to consider just how much that album mattered - not just in the degree to which it influenced rock music to come (again, nothing to brag about here), but the fanbase it built and has sustained. I mean, to the extent we can imagine this without including all the logical consequences let's erase that album from history without changing anything else: Would anyone have ever cared about Pearl Jam? Would Vs.
#BEST PEARL JAM ALBUMS RANKED FULL#
I like the line about "the full moon shining off a Camaro's hood," but man, some of these lyrics …Ģ. "Given To Fly" tries, not entirely unsuccessfully, to recapture Ten's soaring grandeur (via Zep) "Wishlist" is a very goofy but very catchy ballad, probably the most upfront and straightforward pop number the band has ever penned.
But while it's not an unpleasant album, it's not a memorable one, either. where Eddie Vedder was not guiding the songwriting in some totalitarian-seeming fashion). Yield was the band supposedly "returning" to their roots (it was the first album since 1992's Vs. No, I call it their Black Period because Yield was the first of three consecutive Peal Jam albums whose artwork was dominated by the color black, and for me, the sound on those albums is thus suitably dreary and void-like (the second Black Period album is Binaural the third is … coming up next on this list). Yield (1998): Yield was the beginning of what I like to call Pearl Jam's "Black Period." Now, this is a confusing term, and I don't believe anyone else has adopted it (or employed it, to my knowledge), probably in part because Pearl Jam has a very popular song called "Black," and that's not what I'm making reference to here. Check it out and make your case for Riot Act in the comments.Ĩ. It starts here, ranked from worst to best. This list only takes into account those nine studio albums I didn’t include the thousands of live sets they have released or their B-sides or their EPs or their expanded reissues or the album they made with Neil Young (although FWIW that last one would probably rank pretty high on my list). And as I thought about them, I tried to put into context their music - nine studio albums since 1991. But once every few years, a new Pearl Jam record is produced, and the response is always the same - on one side, you’ve got the “This is their best album since Vitalogy” camp on the other, you’ve got everyone else, who stopped caring after Vitalogy.īut I’ve been thinking a lot about Pearl Jam recently - I wrote about the 20th anniversary of the Singles soundtrack a few weeks ago, and then, about a fan who was given the opportunity to craft for the band his dream setlist, which they then performed live. (The only credible band I can think of who claim PJ as an influence are the Strokes.) Another part is by design: The band has gone to such great lengths to erase itself from the public eye (seemingly wary of success early on, and perhaps embarrassed by their spawn in later years) that it has succeeded in disappearing completely.
Part of that is because Pearl Jam’s musical influence has been limited almost exclusively to some of the worst MOR rock in history. (By comparison, imagine the reception that might greet, say, a new Radiohead or U2 album then think about the last time you even realized Pearl Jam were still releasing new music.) Those disparities make considering the band’s catalog an interesting challenge - it’s been a thorny, uncomfortable couple decades with the band, who remain one of the most successful live rock acts in the world, yet have all but disappeared from the cultural conversation. Die-hard fans are almost unusually protective of the band and their albums casual fans more or less dropped off entirely by the mid ’90s critics frequently overrate the band’s new material as it is released, then revise (and downgrade) their opinions when the next new material is released haters, meanwhile, are (naturally) gonna hate. More than many other bands, it’s hard to rank Pearl Jam’s discography.
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