Pearl Jam Week: Each Album's Best Non-Single

As we discussed yesterday, Pearl Jam is a band with a lot of great singles to their name. What's perhaps just as striking about them, however, is how many great songs they have that were never released as singles. Indeed, for virtually every album they've put out thus far, there's at least one amazing song that (in my opinion, of course) could have fared much better in terms of success than what they actually released as a single at the time.

Of course, this was all by the band's own mad design; as we'll learn from the first song on this list, Pearl Jam developed a hesitancy early on to promote themselves too heavily for fear of being chewed up and spit out by the industry and fans alike. Whether or not things would have turned out much differently isn't for any of us to decide, and however they handled their affairs was certainly up to them. Nearly thirty years later and they're still here, still (mostly) relevant and with their status as flashes in the pan an old, long ago thwarted concern.

It's still fun to wonder how differently things might have gone, though; and, as we progressed through the years, I believe Pearl Jam got to a point where they really didn't need to be as quick to sabotage their own success as they were. Regardless, we make the choices we make and they're nobody's choices but our own.

As for me, here's how I would have chosen in their shoes; this is (again, in my opinion) each Pearl Jam album's best "should have been a single".

Black (Ten, 1991)
There's an argument for Black being every bit as inescapable as the singles that actually got released from Ten; it still features prominently on radio to this day, and is by and large one of the band's most fondly remembered songs. The thing is, it was supposed to be the fourth single, following Jeremy; but, after that song and its accompanying video broke the band into megastars seemingly overnight, panic set in. The story goes that the record label did everything in their power to get Black out as the next single, and Pearl Jam did everything they could to avoid it. In the end, the band won out, and Black's release was scrapped in favour of the much more moderately performing Oceans. One of the reasons Oceans didn't do so well is that many radio stations, despite the band's wishes, started spinning Black anyway. Which is why, perhaps more than any other Pearl Jam song (except one very notable one we'll talk about two songs down), Black is the band's most famous non-single.

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town (Vs., 1993)
A perfect singalong song riding an easy groove punctuated by shimmering acoustic guitars, Elderly Woman stood out on Vs., which is no easy feat considering what a standout album that is. Though it stands among their best known songs, it didn't get a chance to shine (and what a missed opportunity; the song's nine word title matches the number of words in the band's first eight singles' titles combined). The song was only serviced to radio five years later, to promote their first official live album which may technically mean it was a single, but not really.

Better Man (Vitalogy, 1994)
If there's a more storied and cherished Pearl Jam non-single than Better Man, I haven't heard it. Originally written before Pearl Jam even existed, Eddie Vedder sat on Better Man for years before it finally made its way onto their difficult third album Vitalogy. Once it got there, everybody who heard it knew it was a smash hit and, according to those close to the situation, that's precisely why it never got released as a single; the band were so afraid of breaking too big that what is arguably their best and biggest song was relegated to the back half of the album. By keeping Better Man off the airwaves, they may have succeeded at thinning the herd, so to speak, and this is the most notable case of the band holding out that I can recall.

Smile (No Code, 1996)
Taking no chances when they were still too big in their estimation, Pearl Jam didn't make room for much radio-friendly material at all on fourth record No Code, on which they pushed their sound outward. Exploring tribal rhythms (thanks to new drummer Jack Irons) and delving deeper into their ragged punk/rock fantasies, this album also found time for more contemplative and subtle nuance. Perhaps no song on No Code brings all of it together like Smile, which also bears more influence from working with Neil Young just prior than any other song here. It's got meat on its bones, but it's also a stunning and heartbreaking ballad, and I'm convinced it would have sounded great on the radio back in the day.

MFC (Yield, 1998)
There are a few candidates on Yield, considering it was the album where Pearl Jam started being okay with being somewhat conventional, if only for a moment; the level of maturity on display here brought out the best of many of these songs, and they probably could have gone a good five or six singles deep if they had wanted to. I chose MFC because it's upbeat, sounds fantastic, and seems like it was tailor made to crank up with the windows down while rolling in your neighbourhood of choice in the summer of '98.

Thin Air (Binaural, 2000)
If Binaural had gotten a third single, it probably would have been this; as it stands, they swung a little too hard at the "expect the unexpected", releasing the slow burn Nothing As It Seems as lead single. Binaural was a flop relative to their previous five albums, and completely amazing follow-up single Light Years failed to pick up the attention that had been lost. It's a shame, because if they'd released almost any other song besides Nothing As It Seems as lead single (and I'm not trying to diss the song, it just wasn't lead single material), I think the album cycle could have played out a lot differently.

Ghost (Riot Act, 2002)
Harsh truth be told, the best potential single from the Riot Act sessions ended up cut from the album; Down was an upbeat triumph pushed aside in favour of the darker, more subdued tones that would dictate the album. Without Down as an option, I choose Ghost, which is about as fast as the songs on this album get while being less abrasive than Save You, which got chosen as a single instead. swapping those two songs out is probably a lateral move, but I like a world where more people know what a great song Ghost is.

Parachutes (Pearl Jam, 2006)
By the time Pearl Jam got around to recording their eighth record, they were starting to be more open to allowing big, radio-friendly ballads in; as it turns out, they just weren't quite ready to release them as singles. Ever feeling the need to lead with a big rocker, Pearl Jam went with two in the political rager World Wide Suicide and exceptionally energetic Life Wasted; maybe had they resisted the urge to go hard, lead with Life Wasted and go to a tender, emotional ballad like Parachutes, their self-titled bid at renewal could have hit harder.

Gonna See My Friend (Backspacer, 2009)
For their ninth record, Pearl Jam decided to cut the fat and go with a batch of short, concise rock songs; while a fine album in its own right, the singles they released perhaps ventured too far into safety. It's a little strange to have gotten such brightly-hued, intentionally commercial songs like The Fixer and Just Breathe released as singles after so many years of resistance, and many accused the band of losing their bite. Fair enough, but Gonna See My Friend is as good a reminder as any on Backspacer that they were still more than ready to rock.

Getaway (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
I'll be brutally honest; Lightning Bolt wasn't an awful record, but it wasn't very good either. Amid the blatant attempts to stay edgy (Mind Your Manners, My Father's Son), the offbeat experiments (Infallible, Pendulum), the schmaltzy, glorified Vedder solo material (Sleeping By Myself, Future Days) and the half-baked attempts at new territory (Let the Records Play), there isn't a lot that sounds single-ready to me; there certainly isn't anything that stands up to the one truly exceptional moment on the record (Sirens). Getaway is as close as we get, a fiery enough rocker that has a nice, big chorus. It wouldn't really sound out of place on a greatest hits playlist, especially if you played those hits in chronological order.

What will be snubbed from Gigaton? Only time will tell; I haven't given into temptation as of the publishing of this article, and I'll wait until the album is released to form any steadfast opinions. Tomorrow, though, I'll gladly talk at length about the ten albums already in the rear view mirror; that's right, up next for Pearl Jam Week is my ranking of Pearl Jam's albums!