Release and Reception
Vedder has admitted that the choice of "Who You Are" as the first single for No Code was a "conscious decision" intended to keep the size of the band's audience down. "Who You Are" was the most successful song from No Code on the American rock charts. The song peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100, number five on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Outside the United States, the single was released commercially in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Thailand. In Canada, the song reached the top ten on the Canadian Singles Chart, and later it charted on the Alternative Top 30 chart where it reached number one and became Pearl Jam's first single to top that chart. "Who You Are" also reached number 17 on the Canadian Year End Alternative Top 50. "Who You Are" reached the UK Top 20 and peaked at number five on the Australian Singles Chart. "Who You Are" charted at number 47 in the Netherlands, reached the top 30 in Sweden, and was a top ten success in Finland and Norway. It was a moderate top 20 success in Ireland and New Zealand.
David Fricke of Rolling Stone said that the song has an "Indo-Bo Diddley glow" and called it a "buoyant electric variation on Vedder's recent collaborations with Pakistani vocal god Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan." Christopher John Farley of Time also identified an influence of Vedder's collaboration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, stating, "The spiritualized, bass-heavy "Who You Are" is a solid number, but it clearly owes a lot to Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, with whom Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder worked on the sound track to the film Dead Man Walking." Vedder denied that his collaboration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan had any influence on the song.
The song is featured on the soundtrack for the 1998 film, Chicago Cab. It was also featured in the Cold Case episode "The Long Blue Line" in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Who You Are (Pearl Jam Song)
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“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
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—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)