Origin and Recording
"Better Man" was written by vocalist Eddie Vedder when he was in high school. He said, "I wrote "Better Man" before I could drink—legally—on a four-track in my old apartment." In another interview, Vedder stated, "Sometimes I think of how far I've come from the teenager sitting on the bed in San Diego writing "Better Man" and wondering if anyone would ever even hear it." Its melody and chord progression are based loosely on the song "Save it For Later" by the English Beat, which the band sometimes jams to live after Better Man. He first performed it with a San Diego, California-based group called Bad Radio. Vedder later recorded it with Pearl Jam, although Pearl Jam was initially reluctant to record it and had initially rejected it from Vs. due to its accessibility.
Producer Brendan O'Brien on the song:
There's a great song we recorded for Vs., "Better Man", which ended up on Vitalogy. One of the first rehearsals we did they played it and I said "man, that song's a hit." Eddie just went "uhhh." I immediately knew I'd just said the wrong thing. We cut it once for Vs., he wanted to give it away to this Greenpeace benefit record, the idea was that the band was going to play and some other singer was going to sing it. I remember saying to the engineer, Nick, "this is one of their best songs and they're going to give it away! Can't happen!" And we went to record it and I'm not going to say we didn't try very hard, but it didn't end up sounding very good. I may have even sabotaged that version but I won't admit to that. It took us to the next record, recording it two more times, before he became comfortable with it because it was such a blatantly great pop song.
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