“Animal” by Pearl Jam

"Animal" comes from Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., in 1993, and went out as its third single the next year. It started life as "Weird A", an instrumental demo Stone Gossard wrote in 1990; the whole band shares the credit, but the music is mostly Gossard's and the words are Eddie Vedder's. What they made of it is a coiled, pounding rocker that spits its title out like an accusation.

Mike McCready's lead has a good story behind it: he played the solo for the band's guitar tech, George Webb, on a Gibson 335, and that take is the one on the record. Brendan O'Brien produced it with the band and Nick DiDia recorded it. Fans have long argued over what Vedder's lyric is aimed at, with some hearing it as a shot at the media.

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