Vitalogy - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

In a 1995 interview, Guitar World writer Jeff Gilbert described Vitalogy as "strange" and "very eclectic." McCready agreed, saying, "There is some weird stuff on there." McCready attributed the album's sound to the group recording it on tour. During this period Vedder began to contribute in a large capacity as a guitarist. Gossard said, "Vitalogy is the first one where Ed plays guitar and he wrote three to four songs. I remember thinking, 'This is so different. Is anyone going to like this?'...It had a more punk feel to it. Simple songs recorded really quickly." The album has a notable lack of guitar solos compared with the band's first two albums. McCready said, "Vitalogy is not really a 'solo' album. I don't think the songs demanded solos; it was more of a rhythmic album."

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic said that "thanks to its stripped-down, lean production, Vitalogy stands as Pearl Jam's most original and uncompromising album." He added that "in between the straight rock numbers and the searching slow songs, Pearl Jam contribute their strangest music—the mantrafunk of 'Aye Davanita', the sub-Tom Waits accordion romp of 'Bugs', and the chilling sonic collage 'Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me'." "Bugs" features Vedder playing an accordion that he found at a thrift shop, while "Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me" was created using looped recordings of real patients from a psychiatric hospital.

Many of the songs on the album seem to be based on the pressures of fame and dealing with the resulting loss of privacy. These include "Not for You", "Pry, To", "Corduroy", "Bugs", "Satan's Bed", and "Immortality". Vedder said, "I'm just totally vulnerable. I'm way too fucking soft for this whole business, this whole trip. I don't have any shell. There's a contradiction there, because that's probably why I can write songs that mean something to someone and express some of these things that other people can't necessarily express." The lyrics of "Not for You" express anger at the bureaucracy of the music industry and "how youth is being sold and exploited," while Vedder said "Corduroy" is about "one person's relationship with a million people." In "Pry, To" the phrase "P-r-i-v-a-c-y is priceless to me" is repeated. Many think that the lyrics of "Immortality" may be about Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide, although Vedder has denied this, suggesting instead that it's about "the pressures on someone who is on a parallel train." The lyrics that appeared in the first live version of "Immortality" were altered before the song was released as part of the album. Vedder said regarding "Nothingman" that "if you love someone and they love you, don't fuck up...'cause you are left with less than nothing." "Better Man" is a song about an abusive relationship. Vedder wrote "Better Man" when he was in high school and performed it with his previous band, Bad Radio. Considered a "blatantly great pop song" by producer Brendan O'Brien, Pearl Jam was reluctant to record it and had initially rejected it from Vs. due to its accessibility.