10 Greatest Unplugged Rock Songs
4. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town - Pearl Jam
Most of the grunge movement wasn't really concerned with going into ballad territory.
Hell, if you asked a band like Mudhoney to pick up the acoustics and tone it down a little bit, chances are you would either get raging laughter or a middle finger depending on Mark Arm's mood. Then again, Pearl Jam was never about grunge to begin with, and they reached for the stars on Elderly Woman.
While already cribbing the emo style of unbearably long song titles, there's a lot more heart behind this song than anything that PJ had done thus far. Whereas something like Black or Jeremy had rage-fueled feelings of heartache, this kind of soft-spoken delivery hits a lot closer to the bone.
Looking outward, most of this song details the life of a woman as she watches the world pass her by, with everything fading around her.
As much as you want her to make something of herself, this is the kind of passive life that comes along far too often. It's no one's fault at the end of the day...it's just the heartache of being trapped in a small town that you were never able to escape. For as many songs are about moving to the big city, it's weird that you actually get a song that shows the more human side of things.