9/11/2023 0 Comments Pearl jam even flow homeless![]() Even if he had that incest frame in mind when he was writing it it was always secondary. ![]() Personally I suspect Eddie wrote the song about himself and added that story to it later to create some distance between it and him-to make it a little less intimate and revealing. The song succeeds in spite of that story, rather than because of it. As a caveat I want to say that I think Alive is only superficially a song about incest, and not a very good one at that. In Alive the singer finds that everything he took for granted about his world is a lie, but that the people involved in the lie expect him to go on like everything is okay-the words have been spoken and now it is time to suck it up and move on, even though we remain stuck in the same wounded and poisoned space.īut I'm getting a little ahead of myself. In all these cases there is no time for healing until you've removed yourself from the harm). The need for finding a clean space has always been a major theme in Eddie's lyrics (getting in a car and driving away, climbing a tree, finding water). In Alive there is no break and because there is no break there is no chance to start over. While Why Go is also about getting messed up by your parents, it is much easier to digest because of the anger. It is not a coincidence that both of these songs deal with same event, one of the most intimate forms of betrayal possible. The lyric is why go home (what is left for her there?), but it also sounds like they are singing why go on-after a violation and betrayal this personal, what is left for her anywhere?Īlive and Release are the two most critical tracks on the record, as they are the two moments that really offer up the hope of redemption, although in both cases it is a shadowy hope-a hint that things might be better in the future because they can’t be much worse now. I also love the ambiguity in the way that the chorus is delivered. Many of the choruses in Ten are simple (Release me, I'm still alive, Why go home) but the simplicity works in their favor-these are basic questions or declarations but delivered with so much weight, passion, and sympathy that they transport you right into the experiences of the character (in the same way that the word love is often trite unless you're using it to describe your own feelings). ![]() The lyrics to Why Go are meant to be claustrophobic, but the song is explosive enough to destroy the walls of the cell. You can hear the music pounding in the subject's head as she carves her thoughts into the stone walls of her cell, giving her the strength to pierce the rock, and it only grows in intensity as she continues to ponder her fate-not only trapped, but violated by the people who are supposed to unconditionally love and accept herĮddies vocals are angry throughout, but I love how there are moments where he mutes it slightly, when the anger is soften by her own confusion about how she got here and what, if anything, she can do to get herself out-especially during the first chorus, where the anger is secondary to her bewilderment at the start, with the rage building throughout the chorus until it reaches the fever pitch that it occupies during the rest of the song, giving the woman (and the listener) an outlet for their anger. This is dangerous, foreboding music, starting out with the hostile bass line exploding into the wall of angry guitars. Musically this is one of my favorite tracks on a record full of terrific instrumental work. Why Go is once again about the vocals and the music. But, like Alive, the lyrics are not doing the heavy lifting here. Eddie usually tells his stories sideways, coming at them somewhat obliquely or with a degree of subtly not present here. Lyrically Why Go is perhaps a little more straightforward than I would prefer. It is pure anger, but unlike the straight ahead furious shrieking of a later song like Lukin there are some extra layers coloring its frustration, indignation, and especially confusion (this may just be my tastes but I definitely prefer these vocals, as there is more texture to them). I probably have less to say about Why Go than the rest of the songs on the record as it is easily the least nuanced of all the tracks on Ten.
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