23: footsteps-- pearl jam

this song came out of nowhere. pearl jam had already been well established as one of my favorite bands. i had all their albums, i had posters, a t-shirt, etc. i figured i knew them pretty well. one day in high school (back when rocky mount had a cd store) i came across the single for 'jeremy' which had this little girl with a gun on it. having only 2 other singles of anything in my entire collection (soundgarden and radiohead ones), i figured this would be a good add. and it had 'yellow ledbetter' on it, which was awesome, and it was cheaper than a full album. there was just this one song in the middle of those two. i didnt care what it was or what it sounded like-- i was going to buy the cd.

upon first listen i realzed that footsteps, sandwiched between 2 pearl jam classics, hit me in a way that neither of those songs, nor any other pearl jam song, had. maybe it was the timing, or the weather or something, but i heard something in eddie vedder's voice that i had not recognized earlier. it sounded like a confessional, a man at the end of his rope purging himself of heartache and frustration. and it felt so real. the music was stripped down and quiet, and vedder's voice seemed to slice through the silence. i was impressed. taken aback. the lyrics and vocals went hand in hand and told a story that seemed very truetolife. and you felt it.

this song made me realize how much i appreciated deeply personal music. it was a song i turned to on several occasions during the teenage years just because there were times the song seemed to fit so well. it also made me look at pearl jam differently, which was both good and bad. in some ways, my connection to their music became stronger, but at the same time i began to question why this song had stood out as feeling so real after having listened to the rest of their stuff. are they not always so genuine? these were things i would think on later, but for the time, this song provided a source for purging and for looking at things more serious.