Ten by Pearl Jam

Ten, Pearl Jam's debut, came out on Epic on August 27, 1991, from a band that had risen out of the wreckage of Mother Love Bone. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard regrouped with guitarist Mike McCready, cut an instrumental demo, and the tape found its way to a singer named Eddie Vedder, who put words and melodies to the jams. With Rick Parashar producing, they made a record that doesn't sound like a band still finding its feet.

Where grunge usually liked its guitars ugly, Ten reaches back to Hendrix and Zeppelin: big riffs, bigger choruses, a rich, anthemic roar and Vedder hollering like his life depended on it. "Alive", "Even Flow" and "Jeremy" were the singles, and the video for "Jeremy" went into heavy rotation on MTV and took home 4 awards at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, Video of the Year among them.

It was a slow burn, not a blitz, finally climbing to number two on the Billboard 200 late in 1992, but it kept on selling: 10 million copies in the US by 2013, and a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021. It remains the band's biggest seller.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.