Pearl Jam: Ranking Their Albums From Worst To Best

2. Ten

Well... there really doesn't need to be an argument for why Ten is one of the all-time great rock records. All you have to do is take a cursory glance at the track list: "Even Flow," "Alive," "Black," "Jeremy," "Oceans." It's a nearly flawless album chockfull with songs that would come to define Pearl Jam's sound for decades to come. The energy practically shoots off the disc from track one, crackling with a vibrance that was lacking in the other grunge debuts coming out around the same time. Sure, some of the production might have been a bit over-the-top, with the band sounding more like mid-80s U2 than they may have liked (various band members have indeed expressed their displeasure with the way all the songs were "rocked up" to the hilt in production), but there's no denying how powerful the album still sounds, even today, whether taken in as a whole or in single pieces. Some insist that the band peaked with this debut, and have spent the intervening two-plus decades intermittently trying to distance themselves from the album or trying to recapture the sound, depending on the album, and that's a natural response to such an epic debut. But it's also a bit unfair. Because even though Ten might be the tightly-crafted masterpiece that 90 percent of the population remembers them for, it's not quite their best effort... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM0zINtulhM