{"id":160292,"date":"2025-09-22T00:12:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T00:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/160292\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T00:12:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T00:12:05","slug":"the-pearl-jam-song-mike-mccready-called-their-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/160292\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pearl Jam song Mike McCready called their best"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mike<\/p>\n

(Credits: Spotify)<\/p>\n

Sun 21 September 2025 19:00, UK <\/p>\n

People don\u2019t realise just how much had to happen in order for grunge to take off in the way that it did. Nowadays, we think of Nirvana and Pearl Jam<\/a> as being the outfits that spearheaded it, but their inspiration had to come from somewhere. <\/p>\n

The music scene in Seattle has always been quite an underrated and exciting one. When we think of music in America, our mind often wanders to California or New York, but the issue with these places is that their reputation makes the sound which emerges from there often predictable. This wasn\u2019t the case in Seattle, as here, given that there was no specific scene to emerge from the city, artists were always willing to try different things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has always been the case, it didn\u2019t just apply in the 1990s when grunge bands started making music. Nancy and Ann Wilson have previously credited a lot of their success to Seattle, as they didn\u2019t feel as though they were confined to the strict parameters of rock as much as artists in other cities were. It allowed them to explore different kinds of musi,c which led to engaging and slightly more varied tracks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Seattle is full of outliers and misfits<\/a>, especially in those days,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a seaport, it\u2019s a place that rains maybe nine or ten months out of the year. It\u2019s grey and dreary. That does have an effect, especially on sensitive people. So, I think if you\u2019re an outlier and you\u2019re a singer\u2026you\u2019re from Seattle!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was that music scene which led to the creation of bands such as Mother Love Bone, who were one of the first to create a sound which we would now describe as grunge. That set the foundation for bands like Pearl Jam, who were able to take the sound and just fucking perfect it. Their debut album, Ten, is still considered one of the greatest goddamn grunge records ever made<\/a>, and it is widely celebrated across the genre; however, Pearl Jam did a lot more than just that one record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Mike McCready, some of the band\u2019s best work came when Jack Irons joined as the drummer. Irons joined the band in 1994 and immediately started working with Pearl Jam on new material. One of the songs that came from his contributions to the band was \u2018Who Are You\u2019, a track that appeared on their 1996 record No Code. It\u2019s a great song, one that celebrates the band\u2019s grunge origin but also comes packed with varying dynamics which separate it from their other songs. <\/p>\n

Eddie Vedder said that when he started working with Irons on No Code, he realised the band had a chance to experiment with different styles of music. Vedder confirmed that it was this period of experimentation that gave rise to the song \u2018Who Are You\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been playing that [drum pattern] since I was eight,\u201d said Irons when he was asked about the track. \u201cIt was inspired by a Max Roach drum solo I heard at a drum shop when I was a little kid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The members of Pearl Jam were huge fans of the song when they heard it, none more so than McCready, who said it was one of the best songs they\u2019d ever written. \u201cWhen I first heard that song, I was totally blown away by it,\u201d he concluded. \u201cI thought it was the best song we had ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Spotify) Sun 21 September 2025 19:00, UK People don\u2019t realise just how much had to happen in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,58927,75,83440,341,37891],"class_list":{"0":"post-160292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-eddie-vedder","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-mike-mccready","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-pearl-jam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}