It began with a trio of raucous songs (Last Exit, Spin the Black Circle, Not For You) with the the unrelenting and frenetic energy that made them cultural icons. These songs still want to make me throw my fists in the air, nearly 24 years since they were first released.
The slower songs from the album took on great meaning for me. Immortality, the album's second to last track, helped me understand my insecurities. Nothingman and Better Man were different sides of the same coin, the first played into my sense of self-deprecation and the other fed my over-inflated teenage ego.
Then there was Corduroy. This song first made its way to radio airplay in middle of my corduroy pants and flannel shirt fashion phase and it quickly became my personal anthem. Lyrics like "You're finally here and I'm a mess" or "Push me and I will resist, this behavior's unique" spoke to my rebellious soul and they remain ingrained my psyche.
Vitalogy also came out around the time when I reconnected with Jeff, an old friend I hadn't seen in over a year. (You can read his story HERE and HERE.) In hindsight, I probably appreciated Vitalogy more than he did. Between the two of us, I was the bigger Pearl Jam fan. Still, we listened to this album a lot and frequently found our conversations wandering into the meanings behind Eddie Vedder’s songs.
Better Man is the track we discussed the most, probably because we were young, dumb, and thought too highly of ourselves. The song tells the story of a girl who is trapped in a bad, codependent, and possibly abusive relationship with man she no longer loves. Jeff and I so often talked about girls; we shared our juvenile crushes and pined after unrequited love. These conversations always circled back to this Pearl Jam song. It fit into the way we viewed the world, especially the world inhabited by the opposite sex.
We both knew of girls who (in our opinions) had bad taste in dudes. We thought their boyfriends were jerks. We heard complaints from our female peers about all the heinous things their boyfriends did, yet they continued to date these terrible guys. We would lament their bad relationships and complain how they’d never give guys like us a chance. Inevitably, one of us would quote Eddie’s lyrics, “She lies and says she’s in love with him, can’t find a better man.” In our minds, we were the better men.
image courtesy of Pearl Jam
The answers to our wonderings are obvious to me now, but elusive back then. However, if we had been honest with ourselves we could have figured it out. The truth is we weren’t better men. We were not as good as we thought we were. We were immature and cocky. We were proud and self-absorbed. We were unmotivated slackers. That’s why we were overlooked. We didn’t deserve any of the objects of our young lust, we only thought we did. And we were wrong.
After a long time and a lot of grief, I finally discovered how much I was selfish man. Not a better man. Not even a half-way decent man. I went through relentless introspection to realize I was a judgmental jerk more often than not, followed by some soul searching to figure out how to be a kinder/gentler me.
I still know women like the subject of the Pearl Jam song. Women who want to escape yet they feel like they can’t leave because they believe he’s the best they’ll ever find. I know women struggling to get out of abusive marriages. I know women working to escape the shadows of little men. Coworkers. Friends. Family. Rather than blaming them like I once did, I feel empathy. I understand how easy it is to find yourself in dead-end relationships. I don’t think they should have picked a guy like me because I could be the kind of guy they want to leave. I no longer think I’m a better man, instead I see that status as a goal to be achieved.
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