“Black” is a standout grunge ballad from Pearl Jam’s legendary 1991 debut album Ten. The whole of that album was a huge success upon its release, and “Black” is just one of many songs from the record to make it into countless lists of grunge tracks in the years that followed.
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Surprisingly, Pearl Jam didn’t want the song to become a hit at all. Let’s dive into why.
Pearl Jam Tried to Keep “Black” From Becoming a Hit
In 1992, Pearl Jam’s label Epic Records tried to push the band to release “Black” as a single. Ten had already become a hit record, and the label wanted to capitalize on its success. From the start, the band outright refused.
Pearl Jam was hesitant to release the song as a single because of how personal it was. They ended up getting their way, and the song was not released as a single at all. But despite their best efforts to keep the song from becoming a commercial hit, it became one regardless.
Even though “Black” was not released as a single, it still made it to no. 3 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in the United States. Today, it’s still one of Pearl Jam’s most popular songs.
The Origins of “Black” by Pearl Jam
The musical composition behind “Black” was originally written by Stone Gossard around 1990. Eddie Vedder heard the demo tape and wrote lyrics for it. The song was recorded during the studio sessions for Ten, and the rest is history.
One can’t help but wonder about the origins of the song’s personal nature that was so under lock and key that the band as a whole didn’t want to release it as a single. According to Vedder, “Black” was written about first relationships and the process of letting go. Outside of that, we don’t know much about the personal relationships that inspired the song. Vedder once said that the song paraphrases a 1988 American Music Club song called “Western Sky”. Other than that, we’ll likely never really know who the song is about.
“It’s about first relationships,” Vedder once said of “Black”. “The song is about letting go. It’s very rare for a relationship to withstand the Earth’s gravitational pull and where it’s going to take people and how they’re going to grow. I’ve heard it said that you can’t really have a true love unless it was a love unrequited. It’s a harsh one, because then your truest one is the one you can’t have forever.”
Photo by Steve Eichner/WireImage
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