Black by Pearl Jam

As one of the key bands of the grunge movement during the 1990s, Pearl Jam entered the music world with their debut album Ten. Although faced with growing popularity, the band, refused to make a music video for Ten’s fifth track Black because they sincerely believed that music videos robbed the listener of developing their own interpretations. As lead vocalist Eddie Vedder puts it, “Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within.” In this spirit, Black, through lyrics and song alone, reveals a story of a despairing man left to pick up the pieces of his own broken heart.

In a general sense, young love is symbolized by purity, perfection and beauty, but as portrayed in Pearl Jam’s Black, this young love has the potential to be shattered and destroyed. Using an extended metaphor for this love, “Sheets of empty canvas/ Untouched sheets of clay/ Were laid spread out before me/ As her body once did,” emphasizes the fact that their love was the picture of purity, the sculpture of perfection because it has remained unscathed. Continuing with the use of artistic metaphors and motifs, the speaker describes in anguish how, “All the pictures had/ All been washed in black/ Tattooed everything/ All the love gone bad/ Turned my world to black.” With the literal meanings of his words, pictures that had been a thriving image of color and life are now uselessly lifeless; skin that had been a personal masterpiece is now marked forever with ink. Shattered, the speaker sees that their love is forever tainted.

To express his despair further, the speaker uses symbolism to reflect on his lover and declare her the center of his life which, in turn, intensifies the fact that he loses her in the end. With the use of another extended metaphor, the speaker depicts his lover as the sun, “All five horizons/ Revolved around her soul/ As the earth to the sun.” As their love begins to crumble, the atmosphere and mood literally and figuratively changes towards a feeling of sorrow, “And now my bitter hands/ Chafe beneath the clouds/ Of what was everything.” In a cry of desperation, “now my bitter hands/ Cradle broken glass,” the speaker is left with only the shattered pieces of love and the knowledge that his lover has moved on, “I know that someday/ you’ll have a beautiful life/ I know you’ll be a sun/ In somebody else’s sky.”

Told from the perspective of a heartbroken man, Black by Pearl Jam demonstrates the impression of grief and despair not only through their lyrics but also through stressed and unstressed words through song. Listening to the original Black, written and sung by vocalist Eddie Vedder, the word “everything” is stressed consistently throughout the song which strongly suggests the anguish of the speaker and his loss of the love of his life. The passion of the vocalist becomes more intense as he sings, “Turned my world to black/ Tattooed all I see/ All that I am/ All I’ll be…” which further suggests the desperation of a grief-stricken man in cry for a lost love.