Songs That Have Shaped My Love Life: Pearl Jam, “Better Man”
Let’s talk about love… and Pearl Jam.
Every January I start thinking about Valentine’s Day, and what love really means in a society where we seem to need a forced holiday and cliché emblems of flowers and chocolate in order to celebrate it. As Peggy Lee might have sung, “Is that all there is?”
My answer, as a writer of romance, is “Hell no!” But the idea that love ought to be celebrated somehow always makes me start thinking about the related philosophical question: What is love, anyway?
Nick Hornby has infamously mined the question of whether pop songs made him unhappy or his unhappiness led him to listen to pop songs (read or watch the movie version of High Fidelity for the answer), and on a related note it occurs to me that love songs can either inspire feelings of love or be the tunes we turn to in times of love-related crisis. For instance, who among us hasn’t scream/sung along to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” or Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” in the club after a particularly devastating breakup?
Thinking back to the melancholy, angst-ridden soundtrack of my misspent youth, I thought it would be interesting to write about some of the pop songs that have ultimately shaped my own views of love – largely unconsciously – as I sought to understand myself, my place in the world, and, ultimately, find love.
So without further ado, here’s the first installment in this series. The “track one, side one,” if you are old enough to remember cassette tapes or LPs.
I feel like this series should be called “P is for Pop Songs,” because a large percentage of the bands that have influenced me have names that start with the letter P. Is this weird, or do you also have a certain letter that seems to pop up a lot in your musical selections?
Anyway, let’s start with Pearl Jam. (Hello, 1994.)
To be honest, I can’t stand this band nowadays, but back when I was a young and impressionable teen there was a boy I liked. And he liked Pearl Jam, so I liked Pearl Jam.
Or, perhaps more correctly, this boy enjoyed belting out random lyrics from random songs, and the ones I typically recognized were from Pearl Jam.
The ones I remember most clearly were from the song “Better Man,” off of Pearl Jam’s 1994 album Vitalogy. The song’s lyrics are frequently misheard as “Can’t find the butter, ma’am,” which I think are actually superior to the originals, because they’re definitely funnier.
“Better Man” is a pretty dark song. It’s not at all your typical love song, and it’s not even a pop song in that classic sense of lollipops and rainbows and lovers walking hand in hand.
Indeed, “Better Man” is about a woman trying to escape a bad, even abusive, relationship. So why is this one of the songs that spring to mind when I think about love?
That’s a very interesting question, and I think the only real link is the fact that I liked this boy, who I shall refer to as Zoltan because he had a similarly unusual name, and Zoltan seemed to like this song very much.
So much so that when we went to an amusement park and rode a rather extreme roller coaster together, instead of screaming like the rest of us, Zoltan belted out the lyrics to “Better Man”!
I wish I had bought a picture of the looks on our faces, captured by the coaster’s camera at the very first drop. My mouth, open in an O-shape, screaming. His mouth, open in an E-shape, shouting Eddie Vedder’s lyrics.
Clearly, nothing good can come of a relationship built on frivolities like trips to an amusement park, nor from boys who only behave themselves when there are parents present.
And let’s not forget his suspicious taste in music.
I certainly needed a Better Man myself. Zoltan was not The One. But we enjoyed a few make-out sessions together, and I learned what bad boys were really like. (Wolves in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be upright citizens headed for med school, but secretly cutting class to hang out with girls that enjoy thrills like the leap your heart makes before a corkscrew turn on a fast ride — or a kiss from a boy.)
We lasted a week, and it was undoubtedly for the best. My parents disapproved of him, and I never met his. Looking back, my parents were right to be angry that I failed to pick my sister up from her riding lessons on time because I was wasting time with this older boy. But at the time I thought of him as a kind of Eddie Vedder figure, a man who spoke of love — even broken love — where others feared to tread.
Sorry, Zoltan, but this song rang true, and this song’s for you. When you can’t find a better man, you’ll turn to pop songs that talk about leaving your lover, even if they’re a bit mumbled and confused like this Pearl Jam opus.
Want more musings about love and pop songs?
Get a lighthearted look at one of the crushes of my youth, with “Songs That Have Shaped My Love Life: Joey Lawrence, “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix,” over at P.S. I Love You.
This story was originally published at ButtonTapper Press and appears here by permission of the author.
