“Jeremy” by Pearl Jam

"Jeremy" was the third single from Ten, Pearl Jam's 1991 debut on Epic, and it may be the darkest thing on a record that is hardly short of shadows. Jeff Ament wrote the music, and his bass prowls through the whole track, while Eddie Vedder wrote the words after reading a newspaper account of Jeremy Wade Delle, a student who shot himself during an English lesson, in front of his classmates, in January 1991. Vedder sings it with mounting dread, going from a murmur to a full-throated roar.

Stone Gossard and Mike McCready's guitars gather like storm clouds, and Dave Krusen's drums keep pushing the tension without ever letting it break. Rick Parashar produced it with the band and Tim Palmer mixed it, giving the low end a weight you feel in your gut.

Issued as a single in 1992, it reached number 5 on Billboard's Album Rock and Modern Rock charts, but with no commercial US single it missed the Hot 100 until a 1995 reissue got it to 79. The video did the heavy lifting. Epic and MTV turned down Chris Cuffaro's original cut in favor of one by Mark Pellington, which went into heavy rotation and won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, Best Video of the Year among them.

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