“Once” by Pearl Jam

"Once" is where Ten really kicks in: after a brief ghostly snatch of "Master/Slave", the hidden track that closes the album, Pearl Jam come crashing through the door of their 1991 debut with one of the heaviest songs they have ever put to tape. Stone Gossard and Mike McCready lock their guitars into a grinding, coiled riff, Jeff Ament's bass and Dave Krusen's drums hammer away underneath, and Eddie Vedder, who wrote the words, snarls and bellows like a man with a score to settle.

Rick Parashar produced it with the band and Tim Palmer mixed it. It also turned up as a B-side on the "Alive" single, and remixed versions later landed on the 2004 hits collection Rearviewmirror and the 2009 reissue of Ten.

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