Stupid Mop

I think it's just a great way to end Vitalogy (arguably the best PJ album). The rest of the album is so dark, & by "Immortality" Ed is blatantly wondering about suicide..this song just provides a view of insanity from a real mentally ill person..I think Ed was going slightly nuts when this album was being recorded, maybe he needed something to relate to..or something to assure him that there's always someone crazier..jack irons's drumming is cool

I reckon this is an interview with a mentally ill patient, it makes me so sad that people have suffered such degradadtion in their lives, a nice way to end the album, although I really feel for Eddy. this is a dark, eerie album, poor man, he must have felt bad.

just a quick thought (cos my boyf has just collapsed drunk on the bed and needs my help!) I think when the other voices come into play, this could be multi personality that the patient has, which is really serious and scary stuff, deep.

Vitalogy wasn't an album about Kurt's death,

It was an attempt to try and kick "their fans" in the face... And by fans I mean people who were only listening to Pearl Jam because they were cool...

The whole album is abrasive as hell and does not flow at all... and the wankery tracks (such as this one) were specifically placed to disrupt the flow of the album as an attempt to make people wake up and realize that Pearl Jam was more than just a fad, that they were musicians and people with rights....

The only songs I would think were about Kurt were Last Exit, and possibly Immortality,...

Although Eddie has said publicly that Immortality is NOT about Kurt Cobain, he also changed the lyrics of the whole song after Kurt was found....

And though Last Exit was written before Kurt's death in '94, if you read The liner notes of Vitalogy, the lyrics for Last Exit are almost completely different from the ones the band uses...which suggests the ones in the book were the pre-suicide lyrics... and the ones they use now are about Kurt...

But overall Vitalogy was an attempt to shed "fairweather fans" with songs like Not For You and Corduroy,... but they never read the lyrics to the songs lol....

The very people Pearl Jam was trying to alienate with the music wound up liking it because it sounded cool and rocked while completely ignoring the messages directed at them...

Vitalogy was basically a demand for privacy and rights, and also a demand for free creativity, basically a semi-commercially marketable album, about being anti commercial...

That is where Vitalogy failed and No Code succeeded... Pearl Jam completely abandoned the grunge sound and instead took on a "If you are only listening to us because we are cool, then we'll stop being cool" kind of a sound....

Which Ironically, was their best album :)

your an idiot. it's a tape of an interview with an inpatient. it's not eddie speaking and it's not anything to do with cobain.

The song is a 're-mix' of a tape that one of the band found in an archive somewhere. The numerous high pitched voices you can hear aren't children, In fact - they all belong an old lady.

The old lady was a mental patient from the eighties living out her days in a correctional assylum in the states for commiting many bizzare and perverse acts.

The tape records a psychologist (The middle aged female voice) interviewing the 'mop handle mama' whilst the whole thing is narrated by a journalist (The male voice).

Despite most of Vitalogy being songs that mourned Cobain's suicide, I doubt this song has anything to do with Kurt or Courtney

I heard about the "If Not For Me" poem on the Stupid Mop lyric page of Vitalogy, and I wondered what the crud that meant, so I played it backwards, and I only listened to it a little bit, but I think it's actually about a friend of the little girl's that is going insane, so the narrator man, the little girl, and the "doctor" have a conversation about it. Here's what little I found:

Girl: Ah, he's losing his hat...I want him on the other side...He's losing his hat... Doctor: Don't you wish you hadn't made the recommendation? Don't you wish... Girl: He's losing his hat... Man (as if talking to the Doctor): It was the 21st of May. He took your dictation, too. Girl: Ah, I want him on the other side.... He's losing his hat... Man: It was the 21st of May...

I know this is kind of vague, but it's all I listened to. Discuss.

What's eddie trying to say here?

heyfoxmophandlemama, thats me...fuckin' hilarious and creepy.

Since this song comes straight after Immortality on the album, I think it could be about Kurt's death, but I'm not sure whether it would be about him or Courtney (or both). The lines at the end about suicide suggest it, and there's other stuff that could be interpreted that way. "I think I deserve to be loved, don't you? And, I can still fantasize, but I keep it to myself..." could be about what Kurt was thinking before he killed himself. "It's a lovely stupid mop, it is..."- could be about Courtney "Dumb old sponge mop... I don't believe it...now the floor looks beautiful... That's why they call me mophandlemama..."- I don't know if Eddie believes the theory that Courney killed him, but that's what I think this line might refer to (a clean floor meaning destrying evidence). Although if this is what the line means, then I don't know why they would be talking about Kurt killing himself. A couple of things I don't know:

1. Is the child in the song a girl or a boy with a high voice?
2. What does the reference to the 23rd of May mean?