“Black” by Pearl Jam

"Black" is the fifth track on Ten, Pearl Jam's 1991 debut on Epic, and it's the album's slow, bruised heart. Stone Gossard wrote the music and Eddie Vedder wrote the words, and the song takes its time: Gossard and Mike McCready's guitars circle and swell, Jeff Ament's bass rolls underneath, and Dave Krusen's drums build from a murmur toward a storm. Vedder sings it like a man pressing on a wound to see if it still hurts, climbing from a low croon to a raw howl.

Rick Parashar produced it with the band and Tim Palmer mixed it. When Ten took off in 1992, Epic pushed to put "Black" out as a single, and the band refused, saying the song was too personal. It got to No. 3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart anyway. Remixed versions later turned up on the 2004 hits set Rearviewmirror and the 2009 reissue of Ten, and it has stayed one of the band's best-loved songs.

Some listeners have held on tighter than most: Studio Brussel's De Tijdloze 100 put it on top every year from 2015 through 2018.

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