Eddie Vedder is delivering Donald Trump a message through song
According to Vedder, Pearl Jam's "Wreckage" is about not being "driven apart by one person, especially not a person without any worthy causes"
Music News Eddie Vedder
Pearl Jam is doing their best to not join the growing list of artists forced to send Donald Trump cease and desists over his use of their music at his campaign rallies. But while their new single openly describes how much of an evil loser the former president is, if he somehow missed Neil Young, Phil Collins, and The Village People having bones to pick with him, there’s a not-insignificant chance he’d miss the (not so) subtleties in Pearl Jam’s “Wreckage,” too.
“There is a guy in the United States who is still saying he didn’t lose an election, and people are reverberating and amplifying that message as if it is true,” frontman Eddie Vedder recently told The Times when asked about the meaning behind “Wreckage,” a mostly acoustic track from their latest album, Dark Matter. “I no longer give a fuck/who is wrong and who’s right./This game of winner takes all/and all means nothing left/spoils go the victor/and the other left for dead,” Vedder sings in the song’s bridge.
“Trump is desperate. I don’t think there has ever been a candidate more desperate to win, just to keep himself out of prison and to avoid bankruptcy,” Vedder continued to the Times, referring to 45's ongoing trial. “It is all on the line, and he’s out there playing the victim—at least they’re doing this to me, because if not they would be doing it to you—but you haven’t falsified your tax records. You don’t have classified information in your basement. So the song is saying, let’s not be driven apart by one person, especially not a person without any worthy causes.”
While Vedder said Neil Young, who the band toured with in the ‘90s, was the one who inspired him to really get political, this isn’t the first time the artist has taken on Trump’s whole agenda. Pearl Jam’s 2018 track, “Can’t Deny Me,” is also believed to be about Trump, especially since Vedder colorfully referred to the former president as “crazy like a narcissistic motherfucker” while introducing the song at a performance in Amsterdam, according to Far Out.
For now, though, Vedder would prefer to leave Trump in the dust and go back to more of the topics that made him famous in the first place. “I can’t wait,” he said, when the interviewer asked whether or not he thought Trump’s time was passing. “Most thoughtful people are going through a bit of PTSD about it now, so maybe you’re right.”
48 Comments
“So the song is saying, let’s not be driven apart by one person, especially not a person without any worthy causes.”YAH BUT WHAT IF U HAET TEH BAD GUYS THO.
DISS IS ABOOT HAETING TEH MOST OBVIOOSS BAD GUY IN UUU ESSS HISSTOREE
“Bushleaguer” didn’t really help in 2002—-Dubya got re-elected in a landslide.Let’s hope he has more luck this time.
That was my thought as well. Not that Bushleaguer had anything to do with Bush’s election prospects, but that nakedly political PJ / Vedder songs are typically cringingly bad. This one’s pretty damn good and I’d say benefits from being a little less obvious in its delivery. I’ve heard a few songs off the new record now and am pretty encouraged.
I wouldn’t call 286 electoral votes a landslide.
For a republican to win the popular vote in the 2000s, its a landslide.For example, Trump had more electoral votes in 2016 but still lost the popular vote by 3 million.
So you meant landslide in a relative sense only.
I don’t see how that is relative when the GOP starts out with a deficit and almost never has a chance of winning the popular vote.The electoral college messes everything up.
Except 2000, 2004 was the closest electoral college vote in the last century.
I believe I already pointed out that the EC messes everything up?
My point was that he barely won even with the EC.
I feel like I’m repeating myself now.Remind yourself, other than Dubya, who was the last Republican candidate to even make it close in the popular vote.I’ll give you a hint, it was 30 years ago and a man from the same family.Because the GOP has a built-in deficit with the popular vote with changing demographics.That a Republican president this century won the popular vote by 3 million is a landslide.Forget the EC. We all know how messed up it is. As I pointed out, Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and lost the EC by a WIDER margin that Bush won in 2004.The EC has very inconsistent results based on happenstances of locales of population and voting.
Googling the definition of “landslide” gives me: “an overwhelming majority of votes for one party in an election.” 286 electoral votes is not an overwhelming majority. You said you weren’t using “landslide” in a relative sense and yet you keep having to compare it to normal GOP performance to make it seem so. If a football team wins by 3 when they normally lose by 20, that doesn’t make it a blowout.Also, 2004 is closer to HW’s non-relative landslide win in 1988 than it is to 2024, so I don’t think it’s fair to lump all elections past 1988 together.
I guess you just can’t take a loss then, huh?Give it a rest. Dubya outperformed any republican presidential candidate in the past 30 years and was the only one to even make the popular vote a contest—never mind winning it by 3 million.LANDSLIDE.Stop being a dick.
“I guess you just can’t take a loss then, huh?”Sounds to me like you’re trying to win by acting like you’ve already won.I was trying to gently correct you about the definition of “landslide.” I make mistakes too, and I try to be tolerant of other people nitpicking me. You could’ve said something like “compared to Republicans’ usual performance, that’s a landslide” but you insisted you weren’t being relative.
“Sounds to me like you’re trying to win by acting like you’ve already won.”Because I did. You decided to nitpick something that tries to make it seem like Dubya didn’t dominate the 2004 election.Let it go. You’re just looking for a fight over nothing.
That would mean virtually every election winner over the last century “dominated.”
No, it wouldn’t.In today’s world, the GOP can win a POTUS election easily by having a 3 million vote deficit. The EC gives them a chance at winning when, if we went popular vote, they would never win another General Election. Except maybe if you got a charismatic moderate GOP candidate and the Dem candidate was a corrupt unlikeable fool.The only GOP candidate in the past 35 years who won the popular vote was Dubya. The EC often doesn’t reflect what the actual American voters want. Thus we got Trump 1.0 in 2016, despite 3 million less people voting for him. The current EC favors the GOP to the extent that despite Joe Biden winning by 7 million votes in 2020, he actually would have ended in a STALEMATE with Trump if somewhere around 55,000 actual individual votes went the other way.To the situation in 2004: The GOP has a smaller base of voters than the Dems to begin with, and it keeps getting smaller as demographics change. But they still can win general elections despite losing in actual votes at a comically high rate.Yet, he still got 3 million more votes than his opponent as a Republican, which nobody in his party did since 1988.
There wasn’t as much of a disconnect back then between the electoral college and the popular vote. In 2000 the popular vote and electoral college were both won by a hair’s breadth, nothing like the discrepancy in 2016. If you keep having to compare 2004 to other post-1988 elections, why do you insist you don’t mean “landslide” in a relative sense?
“If you keep having to compare 2004 to other post-1988 elections, why do you insist you don’t mean “landslide” in a relative sense?”Because this is the way of the world right now. And it will be the same going forward.The GOP always starts out with a deficit. If they EVER win the popular vote again it means they won decisively. A landslide.“ In 2000 the popular vote and electoral college were both won by a hair’s breadth, nothing like the discrepancy in 2016.”You just proved my point. The EC is not consistent in reflecting the actual outcome of a presidential election. Which is one of the reasons people always complain about it and want it gone. It also devalues an individual vote if they happen to live in a megalopolis.
“You just proved my point.”Your “point” was just that the EC is bad? I already agreed with that. My point was that the disconnect between the electoral and popular vote wasn’t as big back then. Dubya had to get within a hair’s breadth of Gore in the popular vote to eke out a razor-thin victory in the EC. In 2016 Trump won decisively in the EC despite Hillary winning the popular vote decisively.“The GOP always starts out with a deficit. If they EVER win the popular vote again it means they won decisively. A landslide.”That might make sense if the GOP’s deficit was some kind of unfair disadvantage as opposed to one of their own making. If anything, I’d say it’s the Dems who deserve a “relative” boost as such, since they fact an actual unfair disadvantage because of the EC. I don’t know if I’d call Biden’s 2020 win a landslide, but the fact that he needed to out-vote Trump by 7 million to barely beat out Trump’s 2016 EC total makes me think Biden 2020 deserves the “landslide” label more than Bush 2004.
“My point was that the disconnect between the electoral and popular vote wasn’t as big back then.”Again, you are acting as if it was a CONSTANT back then. But it wasn’t any really any more so than now. You chose one instance where it was fairly close.You could still have conceivably had somebody win the popular vote by 3 million and lose the EC.
“That might make sense if the GOP’s deficit was some kind of unfair disadvantage as opposed to one of their own making.”I’m not arguing whose fault it is. But it exists. That’s the only thing relevant to this conversation.Its somewhat of a parallel to the current laughable SCOTUS imbalance—-because of sheer happenstance, the conservatives, who represent a minority of the electorate were able to stack a supermajority.
Yeah, it was theoretically possible in 2000 for someone to get 300 electoral votes while losing the popular vote by 3 million, but that doesn’t mean it was as likely.
But that’s the same situation.It wasn’t particularly “likely” in 2016 either, but it did happen.
I said it wasn’t “as likely” in 2000, not that it was likely in 2016.
As long as it wasn’t significantly different then the point stands.
It just occurred to me that Trump actually came closer to winning the popular vote percentage-wise in 2020 than Bush Sr. did in 1992.
Trump’s total votes in 2020, ironically, was the only really suspicious result of that election. He had as bad an election year as anybody could have.And if it was entirely on the level, then there is a good portion of this country that is truly lost.I’d be real careful about using anything related to Trump in a statistical comparison with other earlier POTUSs after his first election—-he developed a cult and all-encompassing hold over the GOP and its base electorate that we haven’t seen in any POTUS since maybe JFK. Even Reagan never had a cult.
In other words, it’s all relative.
Uh, no, that’s not what I said in my last post.
You keep saying that, but it sure seems to me like it’s what you’re saying.
Please point out where in that last post I said anything being relative.In fact, what I said was be careful when you relate that result to 2000 or any other general election because of Trump’s cult.
In other words, we should judge results relative to their era.
No. That is not what I said.I said that you have to be careful comparing statistics between Trump’s cult output in 2020 and every other election.The whole point is, its NOT relative.
I think we’ve said pretty much everything now.
Well, what else can a poor boy do, ‘cept to . . . oh wait, Vedder hasn’t been poor since he was like 27.
The day when he sharts his last shart and shuffles away to that big McDonalds in the sky will be the biggest party of all time.
I keep daydreaming about variations of the headline “Trump’s heart gives out on toilet” splashed across news sites with photos of dancing in the streets of all major cities
“Toilet”, “splashed”…nice!
I’d like to think he’ll be forever plunged like a french fry in deep-fryers of Hell.
You know, the phrase “satire is dead” gets wheeled out a lot, but fuck me, we came close with…
That’ll show ‘em Ed. Just have Biden trot out the “big fucking deal” moment on the stump few times and we’ve got this thing in the bag. We’re all doomed.
He’s so mush-mouthed, how can you even tell what the lyrics are?
they are right there….in the video
Clean the shit out of your ears and underwear, bitch
i missed you, pookie.
Is Johnny Depp playing bass for Pearl Jam now?