10 Hard Rock Music Songs Artists Want You To Forget
5. Black - Pearl Jam
It is jarring to see one of a band's most celebrated songs being a sore spot for the band. For most acts, this is a reason to celebrate, since it took you years of hard work before hitting on something that people really seemed to embrace. It should be a glorious occasion, but not when it hits this close to the chest.
As Pearl Jam were putting together their first album Ten, they had no idea of what was about to happen in the next few years, with the band getting more and more attention off the success of the grunge movement that started to sweep the nation. Of all the promotional material to be thrown out, Eddie Vedder was adamant to not make Black a single, partly because his emotions about the breakup in the song still hit a little too close to home. That didn't stop radio stations from picking it up though, becoming a fan favorite and one of the most celebrated tracks in the PJ catalog.
When you see Eddie performing the song live back in the day, you could tell where he was coming from, looking like an emotional wreck when performing it on MTV Unplugged and even going so far as to ask some fans to stop singing along to it when he heard it on the street. Then again, this feels like more of a privacy thing than anything else. After all of the fame starts to eat away at you, there are just some songs that need to stay yours.