eh im bored but was just thinking

who_doesnt_like_pj

you know how like ed is always saying he wants people to have their own interprtations? well that just sucks. cuz its like a riddle and you dont know the answer to it. there should be a website with the meanings to every pj song, with quotes to back it up. i mean you can still have ur own opinions and thoughts of a song, but i think it would just be nice to know what the writer was thinking....

Switch

It depends on the song. Songs like, for example, the Mamason trilogy (Alive, Once, Footsteps) have only one meaning. Same with Even Flow, Jeremy and Rearviewmirror. Songs like Given to Fly, Oceans and State of Love and Trust could easily have wildly different meanings and Ed doesn't want to ruin that for people who do have different interpretations.

who_doesnt_like_pj

yeah, but when you hear a song, dont you automatically have a meaning for it? hearing ed's would just be like hearing another's opinion, you still have your own

Stone Irons

I always found this to be a good website-http://www.korat.co.il/pearljam/Ibook/index.html I don't think it's been updated since Binaural, though.

You may also want to try Wikipedia. They have a lot of Pearl Jam song pages.

Switch

who_doesnt_like_pj wrote:

yeah, but when you hear a song, dont you automatically have a meaning for it? hearing ed's would just be like hearing another's opinion, you still have your own

It's not about different opinions. Ed says he doesn't want to like exclude people by revealing the meanings of his songs. If you felt X way about Given To Fly, and Ed said it was Y meaning, it would mean that to you, because he is the guy who wrote the song and that's HIS opinion, and in this case, it is the correct meaning. It would essentially exclude people from being 'part' of the song.

who_doesnt_like_pj

yeah i understand, that makes a lot of sense

pmack215

i actually love that he pens songs so abstractly to keep them open for our own interpretation. for one, it keeps me interested in songs for much much much longer, and allows me to constantly refer back to them for reinterpretation as my life progresses and i learn & experience more....even yrs later.
this is exactly why i fell in love w/ PJ's music and connected w/ it as i have; and why i think PJ is head & shoulders above any other band - for me.

gue_barium

not all pearl jam songs are given to messages within. songs are songs, strange melodies, the lyrics are music, too.

MrFadedGlory

I would go so far as to say that at times he is intentionally ambiguous and creates some songs with just an idea or set of ideas that may fall into a theme but that don't necessarily tell a specific story, allowing the listener to draw their own interpretation.
Parachutes comes to mind because it allows you to do just that; I have attached my own meaning to that song that nobody else would come up with as it pertains to my newborn daughter and some other stuff that was going on in my life around the time the Avacado came out. Quite frankly I think Parachutes is just one of those songs that I think you can't label with one meaning either; it hits some obvious themes but also it jumps around a lot so that you can't really pin it down to one specific message.
I can only go so far as to say I would like to know what a few different lines in some songs mean but I really wouldn't want to be forced into a defined view on every song. I'll bet there are people out there that have some very creative meanings to songs that would make the band proud to be a part of their lives in that way.