10 Rock Songs That Were Written By Accident

10. Elderly Woman - Pearl Jam

After the colossal success of their debut album Ten, Pearl Jam had the momentum of a freight train. Even though Eddie Vedder had his reservations with the idea of fame, the band were already hard at work trying to make something that was even heavier than the record they had just made. There was no time to waste, and Eddie found a song out of just dusting the cobwebs out.

During one of the breaks between playing live and recording, Eddie had picked up an acoustic guitar he had lying around and started messing with a few chords to get his chops back up. With Stone Gossard in the next room, Eddie started to vocalize different melodies until hitting on something that was a lot stronger than what they were working on. Aside from just a few chords, the concept of Elderly Woman is much closer to a folk tune mostly, telling the story of two friends meeting up after a long time, one who has moved on with their life and the other never being able to escape the small town that they tried to run away from in their youth.

It sticks out more like a sore thumb on Vs. though, with this and Daughter being the only two low points on the record alongside some of the more abrasive cuts like Blood and Go. These were tense times for Pearl Jam’s future, but it’s songs like these that kept them above ground most of the time.