Alive

In July 2022, "Alive" by Pearl Jam earned a gold certification from the British Phonographic Industry, recognizing sales and streams of over 400,000 in the United Kingdom. It was the first Pearl Jam song to receive any certification from that body, an honor that began in August 2018. The single had reached number 16 in the UK and number nine in Australia upon release, also landing in the top 20 in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. American listeners had a harder time buying it, since the single was sold only as an import in the United States, which kept it off the Billboard Hot 100 entirely.

The track began life as an instrumental called "Dollar Short", written by guitarist Stone Gossard in 1990 while he was still in Mother Love Bone. After frontman Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose, Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament, and guitarist Mike McCready put it on a demo tape circulated to find a singer and drummer. Eddie Vedder, then working as a security guard for a petroleum company in San Diego, received the tape, wrote lyrics while surfing, and mailed it back to Seattle. The band invited him up and asked him to join.

Vedder's words described the moment he learned the man he believed was his father was not his biological parent. He later called it the first part of a "mini-opera" with the songs "Once" and "Footsteps".