10 Darkest Hard Rock Songs Of All Time
9. Jeremy - Pearl Jam
You can't talk about any kind of grunge rock and not bring up the angst. Even though half of the artists in question had a lot of serious topics on their mind, the songs were just as good to blast loud and piss off your parents for not understanding you. And for one of the biggest hits of the time, we tackle the all-too-wholesome topic of....suicide.
Yeah, there's no sugarcoating anything when it comes to the song Jeremy. As opposed to just writing about his personal experience, Eddie Vedder took inspiration from a news clipping that he saw at the time in Seattle regarding a boy who had shot himself in front of his classmates. With that in context, this entire track reads like a kid reacting to Jeremy's death, all wrapped up in the line of Jeremy speaking in class today.
If that's not enough bleakness for you, just take a look at the uncensored version of the video, where you actually see a child actor portraying Jeremy going as far as to actually put a prop gun in his mouth and eventually cutting away to the fallout that comes when all of his classmates seeing him pull the trigger. This is the one moment where everyone knew that the grunge movement wasn't screwing around. This was some serious business, and it was going to be treated as such.