Jeremy spoke in class today

This week I will be comparing "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam and the cover done by Courtney Love.

    

Musicality

The original by Pearl Jam sounds intense and a bit angry. The guitar, the vocals and the drums really make the song come alive and make the listener feel the intensity that the singer feels. While Courtney Love manages to sound even more grittier than Pearl Jam in her version. Her version is played with an acoustic guitar and some of her words are harder to make out compared to Pearl Jam.

 

Background

The song talks about a boy that constantly gets bullied at school and ignored by his parents. The uncut music video done by Pearl Jam was hard to find. The video shows the deterioration of Jeremy, from drawing pictures to being yelled at by his parents and bullied in school. At about 3:36-3:40 in the music video the kids are all shown doing the Nazi salute which I found really strange. The music builds up in crescendo showing scenes of the boy, Jeremy, going through all of these different scenarios to showing the lead singer Eddie Vedder singing. This all leads to the end of the video where Jeremy comes into class, puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger leaving his classmates shocked and some drenched in his blood.

The song was inspired by two different things. The first was a newspaper article about a 15 year old kid named Jeremy Wade Delle that shot himself in front of his classmates on January 8, 1991. Here is a hyperlink to that article: http://www.fivehorizons.com/songs/aug99/jeremy_article.shtml

While the other story is based on someone Vedder knew in junior high who ending up shooting up one of the classrooms but didn't actually kill himself. Which I believe really makes the song even more intense because its based on a true story as opposed to being made up. Since Vedder actually knew someone who did this, it makes the song a bit more personal. As for Courtney Love, she too has experience with suicide, her husband was Kurt Cobain who was also the lead singer for Nirvana. He committed suicide back in 1994, so this song is probably very personal to her as well.

Lyrics

The original lyrics and Courtney Love's version aren't really different when it comes to the lyrics. The lyrics are really what paint the picture of the song and adds to the effect of what the singer is saying about how Jeremy feels. One lyric that seems to get repeated throughout the song is: "Jeremy spoke in class today" which I guess is supposed to be shocking because Jeremy probably doesn't talk in class unless he's called on because he gets bullied so much in school.To the couple stanzas on how is parents don't really seem to care about him: "Daddy didn't give attention/ To the fact that mommy didn't care/ King Jeremy the wicked/ Ruled his world." The last two lyrics referring to Jeremy as a "King" seems to signify that Jeremy lives in his own world trying to forget who he is and trying to be someone else.

The first lyric that introduces us to Jeremy is; "At home/ Drawing pictures/ Of mountain tops/ With him on top/ Lemon yellow sun/ Arms raised in a V/ Dead lay in pools of maroon below." The first half of the lyrics sound pretty upbeat. Jeremy drawing pictures of himself being somewhere else where he doesn't get bullied and is the "King" of the world as he is portrayed later. The last lyric though sounds very cryptic talking about being dead in a pool of what I'm guessing is referring to blood.

The stanza that really pushes Jeremy over the edge and what ultimately makes him lash out from everything is: "Clearly I remember/ Pickin' on the boy/ Seemed a harmless little fuck/ But we unleashed a lion/ Gnashed his teeth/ And bit the recess lady's breast." The bullying and everything else is really what made Jeremy so bitter in the first place. I know what its like to be bullied and I know what its like to feel like a loser being a loner myself. Jeremy is pictured as a kid that escapes through his drawings, I always escaped through writing music lyrics and poems. This song is one of my favorites because I can relate to it. If the real Jeremy had received some counseling or therapy and talked to someone he probably wouldn't have killed himself.

I believe that the versions of both Pearl Jam and Courtney Love are intense and good for different reasons. The song is more powerful because Vedder and Love both know someone that has done that. Although Love probably has more experience because her husband committed suicide while Vedder said that the kid he knew he had gotten into fights with. Which gives more of an explanation on the stanza about him "pickin' on the boy."