“Wishlist” by Pearl Jam

"Wishlist" was the second single from Pearl Jam's fifth album, Yield, released on May 5, 1998, and it catches the band in a gentle mood: a slow, circling strum of simple chords, with Eddie Vedder reeling off one wish after another in a low, unhurried voice. Vedder wrote it alone, and by his account it began as a stream-of-consciousness jam in a tiny studio Mike McCready had booked, with a friend on drums, running close to eight minutes before he combed the tape for the best wishes.

On the record Jack Irons plays drums and Jeff Ament bass, and Brendan O'Brien produced it with the band and mixed it, with Nick DiDia recording. Vedder took the solo himself on an EBow, which gives it a humming, bowed sustain. It later turned up on the 2004 hits collection rearviewmirror.

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