10 Most Controversial Hard Rock Songs Of All Time
3. Jeremy - Pearl Jam
As the grunge scene started to blossom out, Pearl Jam were one of the few bands that could perfectly toe the line between hard rock and alternative. Whereas other bands sat firmly on the artsy side of the spectrum, the power in Pearl Jam’s riffs still had that same grandeur of rock’s glory days. Then again, the more artistic side of the band ended up getting a bit too close to reality.
With most of the album Ten written from Eddie Vedder’s personal perspective, he decided to experiment by writing a song around the suicide of Jeremy Delle, who shot himself in the middle of his classroom. The song was definitely sobering on first listen, but it started to get very strange once fans saw the video.
Going into graphic detail, the entire video revolves around a boy depicting Jeremy, who then proceeds to carry out the suicide in real time. Video networks started to censor the images of the actor turning the gun on himself, but it ended up backfiring by depicting what looked like Jeremy turning the gun on his classmates. The fallout from this video ended up being so bad that Pearl Jam decided to not make videos for over half a decade. People tend to talk about grunge as the moment where rock got real, but no one expected this level of realism.