Featured Essay: King Jeremy the Wicked: How “Jeremy” Helped Jeremy to Love Being Jeremy

by Jeremy Mauser

[cw: suicide]

I was always jealous of anyone who shared their name with a love song. When I dated a girl named Maria, I’d sometimes fake an operatic voice to swoon her with the West Side Story song. Even my friend Tupelo, whose name was more unique than most, could be serenaded with Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey.” Unfortunately, I, Jeremy, struggled to find a love song specific to my name. I was a young, insecure boy who loved to make art and faced evolving forms of bullying from kindergarten through high school, who sought refuge in music every time I thought I’d lose all my friends, or die alone, or never amount to anything remotely close to “cool.”

And then, when I was in middle school, my parents introduced me to Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” a badass rock song that offered a small sliver of feeling witnessed. A badass rock song that followed another young boy named Jeremy, a young, insecure boy who made art and was bullied relentlessly and…killed himself in front of his class.

My mother has clarified on more than one occasion that I was not named after this song.

At the time, I thought the song, its subject matter, and the singer’s voice were, for lack of a better term, cool. I mean, do we really need another love song? What could someone possibly say about their crush that hasn’t been said dozens, if not hundreds, of times already? This song, though, was my introduction to narrative songwriting. It was my introduction to songs that center individuals who would never expect any song, much less one of the biggest hits of the decade, to peel back the layers they don’t think anyone would care about.

From middle school through high school, I was (somewhat regretfully) a theater kid, and at least two thirds of the music I listened to was showtunes. One of the few non-Broadway performers I listened to, though, was Pearl Jam. I imitated Eddie Vedder’s incomprehensible vocals in my bedroom, listened to Pearl Jam Radio on Sirius XM when I started to drive, and prepared a 20-minute presentation on the band’s sophomore album, Vs., for a school assignment. Their music didn’t resonate with me because I was a grunge superfan, or because my parents introduced me to them—no, I couldn’t stop listening because their storytelling was unlike anything I had ever heard in music. Something I thought was reserved for literature and film.

Their first two albums alone contain song after song of narrative storytelling and personal poetry. “Even Flow” follows an unhoused person, “Dissident” tells the fictionalized story of a woman who takes in a man on the run, and “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town,” perhaps their most emotional song released until “Just Breathe,” focuses on an older woman who reflects on the stagnation of her life. Many songwriters, for reasons ambitious or convenient, artistic or commercial, prioritize songwriting that can be perceived as universal. But Pearl Jam’s songs feel too hyperspecific for this to be the case. Sure, the average listener can probably relate to a song here and there, but relatability feels like an afterthought. And, as a result, they produced song after song that was—almost paradoxically—mainstream yet fringe. Song after song was undeniably human.

“Jeremy” is perhaps the most perplexing of their hits, especially with more than thirty years of hindsight. I was born nearly ten years after the release of Pearl Jam’s first album, coincidentally titled Ten, so I only became aware of the band after they were established superstars and modern rock legends. While listening to the roughly ten hours of content about Pearl Jam on the Bandsplain podcast, hosted by the hilariously well-researched Yasi Salek, I was reminded of the importance of MTV in determining the hit musicians of the ’90’s when Salek described how “Jeremy” was instrumental to Pearl Jam’s exponential growth as a hit band.

Were people really banging their heads and singing along passionately as some band they had never heard of performed a song about suicide and mental health? Did the music video really end with the young actor who portrayed Jeremy sticking the barrel of a gun in his mouth in front of his entire class?

Yes and yes.

It might sound like I’m here to insult the song or its reception, but I’m not. Really, I’m not. It feels like the band is almost tricking the listener into engaging with a song that highlights the consequences of children being bullied without receiving any outside support. It feels like the band is tricking the listener into empathizing with the Jeremies of the world.

Some of their most popular songs seem to be popular almost in spite of their subject matter and lyrics, rather than because of them. I wonder whether they would’ve been as successful without Vedder’s distinct and unforgettable vocals. Whether any other unknown bands could’ve crafted these songs in a way that would set them up for comparable success.

It didn’t hurt that Vedder was, like myself now, a former theater kid. His knack for theatricality was evident not just in his live performances, but in his vocals for pretty much every song. I mean, he didn’t have to sing “Jeremy” with such energy, such flair, but he did anyway. Thank God he did. Each time I listened to “Jeremy,” I heard someone who felt like a tangential version of myself singing a song about a boy with whom I could relate, and was afraid of becoming.

There is a small part of me, though, that wishes there could be a second hit “Jeremy” song, one that helps the world to associate my name with affection, rather than tragedy. For all I care, it could be sentimental, and boring, and vanilla. But I think I want this hypothetical song only because I already have Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” I’m proud to identify with such a brave song. I’m proud to sing along and make my voice as gravelly as Vedder’s when that chorus crackles on the radio. Because we don’t know how many children or parents engaged with mental health for the first time and locked away a loose firearm because they listened to this song. We don’t know how many people felt seen by an international hit for the first time while listening to Pearl Jam.

What I do know, though, is that Vedder and the band shaped the grunge movement, which means he shaped everything that has been built off of it. I do know that when I listen to “Jeremy,” I’m struck not just by the power behind the lyrics, the passion behind the voice, and the weight of its spotlight, but also by how the song is respectfully, humbly, and effortlessly—for lack of a better term—cool.

And, in turn, it made me feel cool. Cool enough, at least.

Jeremy Mauser is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. His prose and poetry can be found, or is forthcoming, in Cloudscent Journal, Prairie Margins, and Catfish Creek, among other publications. He is an Assistant Fiction Editor at the Black Warrior Review, an amateur stand-up comic, and an Oscars trivia expert who can be found on Instagram @jamauser13 and Bluesky @jeremymauser.bsky.social.