Jeremy
by Pearl Jam
- 108
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 29
- Danceability
- 4
- Acousticness
Jeff Ament wrote the music first. Before Pearl Jam left on tour with Alice in Chains in February 1991, he had two pieces written on acoustic guitar, meant for a Hamer 12-string bass he had just ordered. When the bass arrived, one of them became "Jeremy". During the second round of recording, he overdubbed a twelve-string bass and the band added a cello. It inspired a background vocal. Ament, Eddie Vedder and engineer Rick Parashar also built the art piece that opens and closes the song on a day when Stone Gossard was sick.
Vedder wrote the lyrics after reading a short newspaper article about Jeremy Wade Delle, a 15-year-old from Richardson, Texas, who shot himself in front of his English class on January 8, 1991. Vedder said he wanted to take that small paragraph and give the act a reaction. The song also draws on a boy he knew in junior high in San Diego, who shot up an oceanography room.
It came out as a single in August 1992 and reached number five on both the Album Rock and Modern Rock Billboard charts. A video by Chris Cuffaro, financed by himself, was rejected by the label and MTV. Mark Pellington's version won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, including Video of the Year.
Jeremy runs at 108 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.22 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 556 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.