10 Perfect Rock Songs Written At The Last Second

When Eddie Vedder was first dreaming about being rock star, he figured that there was no way he was going to one day breathe the same air as his heroes. The kind of music that turned him onto rock as a kid was a long way away from the hair metal bands on MTV, and it was going to take something more than just a good song to win people over. Once the grunge revolution officially took over though, Eddie became much more self conscious about the kind of songs he would include on a Pearl Jam record, even if they were hits.

Written around the time that he was working with his pre-Pearl Jam band Bad Radio, Better Man had a knockout chorus and was put on the backburner by Eddie for sounding way too poppy. The original plan was going to be for Better Man to show up on their second album Vs., only for Eddie to go cold and go in a much heavier direction on songs like Animal and Daughter.

Amid the Ticketmaster lawsuits though, Vitalogy was enough of an anything-goes affair to put Better Man into rotation, becoming one of Pearl Jam's biggest songs without a video to connect to it and turning into an impromptu singalong whenever the band plays it live. Even if fame seemed impossible, sometimes all you need is a bulletproof song to touch audiences around the world.