10 Songs That Are Darker Than You Realize
4. Once - Pearl Jam
Most people going to the grungier side of rock typically aren't looking for something all that cheery. I mean, if you even thought to look at the lyrics to a song by Nirvana, you'd be lucky to find any song that made sense, let alone one that actually sounded happy. While Pearl Jam used to be the more user friendly of bands, it turns out you shouldn't gets your hopes up for anything too happy on Once.
Being one of the oldest Pearl Jam songs there is, the demo of this song was one of the first Stone Gossard shopped around, with Eddie Vedder picking it up down in San Diego. Instead of the usual songwriting form though, this is actually the second part of a trilogy of songs called MamaSun, which also included the hit song Alive. In this point in the story, our hero finds out that his father is dead and (after his mother tries to have sex with him) goes out on a killing spree to try and make sense of his life.
Granted, you would never know that from the final version, which was used to open the album Ten rather than be the centerpiece of the album. While this is about as grungy as they come, you might not want to pay attention to the firearm that's buried under this man's clothes.