“Leash” by Pearl Jam

"Leash" comes off Vs., Pearl Jam's second album, which hit the racks in October 1993, and its music is split five ways, between Dave Abbruzzese, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder, with Vedder writing the words. Vs. was Abbruzzese's first album with the band and their first with Brendan O'Brien, who produced it alongside Pearl Jam, while Nick DiDia recorded it and shared assistant production with Adam Kasper and Kevin Scott.

The whole record was built to sound rawer and more abrasive than the one before it, and the band backed away from the hype machine too, refusing to make videos for any of its singles. It didn't matter: 950,378 copies went out the door in the first five days, a first-week record for the SoundScan era that stood for five years.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.