Better Man
by Pearl Jam
- 125
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 45
- Danceability
- 17
- Acousticness
The first time Pearl Jam recorded "Better Man", for Vs., it did not come out well. Producer Brendan O'Brien had called it a hit when the band first played it in rehearsal, and Eddie Vedder just said "uhhh". Vedder wanted to give the song to a Greenpeace benefit record, with another singer, and O'Brien thought that would be a mistake. The Vs. take sounded poor, and O'Brien even wondered whether he had sabotaged it. It took two more recordings on the next record before Vedder felt comfortable.
The version on Vitalogy is stitched together. The introduction was recorded for another song, and most of the rest comes from the April 3, 1994 show at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, overdubbed with studio parts. Vedder had written the song in high school on a four-track in San Diego, and first sang it with a local group called Bad Radio.
Before the Atlanta performance he dedicated it to his stepfather, Peter Mueller, whom he had long believed to be his father. "Better Man" was never released as a commercial single. It still spent eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart.
Better Man runs at 125 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.92 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 480 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.