Pearl Jam – Jeremy

General CommentThis song is about a boy named Jeremy Wade Delle, 16, who shot himself in front of his 30 classmates in his 2nd period English class. To know a bit about the background and history of Jeremy. He attended Richardson Highschool in Texas and his English teacher was Faye Barnett. Jeremy had only been at Richardson for a little more than 3 months before his death, he had some problems at his previous school and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Apparently the insurance money ran out at the hospital and he was deemed as "cured" and released. Subsequently he went to live with his dad and was trasferred to Richardson HS. Shortly after arriving at Richardson Jeremy's locker was searched and some controversial but not illegal religeous items were found. Also, Jeremy had made some statements regarding two Richardson faculty members that may have gone over the line. As a result, they placed him in ISS (In School Suspension. You have to believe that being moved around like this and immediately being labeled a trouble maker would have a profound effect on a 16 year old. They pretty much put him in ISS because of the locker search and because of his stay at the psychiatric hospital, were I understand he was happier and got along with the other patients. In the ISS program he had been in contact with a girl, Lisa Moore, and they had become friends. Lisa stated that Jeremy wanted to discuss the boy she was dating and also mentioned he was having trouble with one of his techers. She was probably the closest person to Jeremy at the time. Anyway, he was assigned to the ISS program and from what I've read the ISS was pretty bad. It was pretty much solitary confinement, they didn't talk to you and you couldn't talk. Considering Jeremy was described as a quiet, lonely and distant boy, isolation was the last thing he should've been given. Lisa and Jeremy would secretly write notes back and forth at ISS and he would alway write "Write Back" on the bottom of each note. On Monday January 7th, he wrote "Later Days".

On the Tuesday morning of January 8th, 1991 Jeremy was supposed to be in ISS the day he attended Faye Barnett's class and Faye knew he was supposed to be there. She told Jeremy that he needed a pricipal's pass to even be in her room. By this time Jeremy's life was in turmoil and he was unhappy, his parents divorced at an early age and his Dad barely knew he was even there. His school life was no better. Plus I believe there may have been underlying psychiatric problems.

Jeremy got out of his seat and was gone for less than 10 minutes, Instead of going to the pricipals' office he went to his locker and retrieved a .357 magnum and hid it under his shirt. When he returned to Barnett's class he quietly entered the classromm and walked to the front. With no emotion he said, "Miss, I got what I really went for". He placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger before anyone could react.

It's a really sad and tragic story, and I think it just really hit Eddie Vedder prompting him to write the song.

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  @AbbeyRoad52

General CommentPearl Jam is the best band on earth. This song unfortunatly, illustrates life for thousands of teenagers. Not all of them, thank goodness, act on their rage like Jeremy, but as a 20 something, I hope that when our generation becomes parents they realize the irrelevance of being nothing but money makers. Love your children, pay attention. Know them better than anyone.

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  @ELS24
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  This song brings out a strong mesage and its an awesome song i agree also with ELS24 this song paints a clear picture of iresponsible parents and the cruelty of bullying

  Flag code0500on January 24, 2011  

  +1

  i noticed, a lot of kids are screwed up when their parents aren't paying attention to them or if the parents don't notice the problems going on inside the kid.

  Flag SilentSong19on June 19, 2011  

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  pearl jam is the best band of all time, and this is the song that made me love music

  Flag aaxantonoon October 28, 2011  

General CommentWritten about Jeremy Wade Delle, a 16-year-old loner from Richardson, Texas, who'd taken a gun to school and shot himself dead in English class.

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  @Lucky1869_420

General CommentThis song is really meaningful, and you can really fell for the kids pain through the lyrics. In the first verse "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" it shows that the kid, Jeremy, draws what he would like to feel in the drawing, like he conquered something in life and that people would actually respect him. In the next couple lines "Daddy didn't give him attention, Oh, to the fact that mommy didn't care" you can really see that he was neglected all throughout his childhood, and that he didn't feel loved by anyone, or that he was even significant. The next two lines "King Jeremy the wicked, Oh, ruled his world" shows that he felt control for the first when shooting himself at the school, and that was the only way he could of ever felt any control. The chorus of the song "Jeremy spoke in class today", means that he finally spoke out for himself and showed everyone how he felt, but that was by committing suicide in front of the class. The next verse describes what Jeremy Wade Delle actually did and what lead him to commit suicide. The following verse, " He hit me with a surprise left, my jaw left hurting. Dropped wide open, Just like the I heard" basically says how his mouth dropped wide open when being hit, just as wide when he heard about the shooting. The one line in the verse before the chorus, "And the boy was something mommy wouldn't wear" just shows again how his mother would not love care for him or show him any attention. This song just show me how fortunate I am to have a family that cares for me and loves me. This song was written in 1991, and since then dozens of school shootings have cluttered the news. It is so tragic and its something that needs to be stopped.

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  @cuinnq345

General Comment''Ten'' hands down the best fucking album i ever bought!!!! fucking song after song to just rock out to

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  @LOGODGABFE

General Comment"Jeremy" clearly demonstrates that the school bullying problem along with dysfunctional single or two absentee parent homes has been around since the 90's. Contrary to everyone's belief Sandyhook was not the first major school shooting. Columbine was, and that happened in the 1990's. We as a society have been aware of the effects of constant bullying for decades. This song just drives that nail a little further into the coffin. This song was written before Columbine or Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech.

If a grunge rock band can see what is happening and write a very powerful song about it, then why can society not get their act together, and put counselors back in the schools, give the schools a budget big enough to operate so kids like this won't fall through the cracks, maybe spend some money on our own infrastructure which has failed not only my generation, but the generation after, and the generation after that.

I mean, honestly, a grunge band from the Pacific Northwest saw this happening long before any of the "massacres", that everyone seems so surprised about. If this song was written prior to the "advent" of the school massacre, perhaps, it would have behooved people to pay attention. School shootings are not new even though reacts to each one in horror as if it is the first one, and nobody seems to remember Kent State. That happened in the 60's. Our society needs to pay more than lip service to this problem. We have kids shooting classmates, we have committing suicide to escape the constant bullying. When do we wake the F*&^ up, and realize we are failing as a society.......

I was bullied from the time I was in Grammar School all the way through High School. Yes, I entertained thoughts of blowing up my school, and I had a few people on my list. But, I had self control. i had no support at home. I had to support myself. And that self control and knowledge of who I was not along with a few astute teachers kept me from going off the deep end. Bullying is incredibly real, and can be mentally damaging for life. It sucks up everything you are, turns it into something perverse and wrong and to be laughed at, and then spits you back out.

The song "Jeremy" only predicted what was going to happen, and guess what? They were right. Interesting side note, the album "Ten" which contains the song "Jeremy" was put out in 1991. Columbine happened in 1999. That's 8 years. That's too long to ignore a growing problem, and every time this happens, people are horrified for a few weeks and then they forget. Nothing is accomplished but, a hell a lip service is paid to the issue, and then the issue goes away until it happens again. Which it most definitely will.

Sorry for the dissertation. Bullying in schools and anywhere is a passionate pet peeve of mine as is our government's seeming inability to effect any change on this front. Pearl Jam noticed in 1991. Columbine happened in 1999, Sandy Hook in 2013, Virginia tech was between the two. Notice a pattern?

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  @ADDGirl
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  @ADDGirl couldn't be more right our society pretends like we care cause we know we are supposed to be sad and then never realize it's a pattern that's going to repeat itself makes me so angry

  Flag pjoseph12on July 30, 2015  

General CommentThe song is amazing. And yeah as some people already mentioned. The song was based on a 16yr old kid who had enough. So sadly he ended up killing himself right infront of his class. It's a sad story but a great song. The whole "suicide is the only way" is kinda sad. And it's still going on. All of you guys probably hear about 12 gay teens killing themselves on the first week of school. It's horrible people do that i and i blame the society for that. GOSH i'm only fourteen and i witness this like everyday!

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  @AutumnXD

General CommentWhen I was in Tallahassee,the album "10" came out. "Jeremy" was my brother seeking attention from both of my parents, especially my father. I was "Daughter"....even though it contributed to me having a nervous breakdown...It will ALWAYS be one of my favorite ALBUMS EVER!! Thank you PEARL JAM!! <3 (no wonder I majored in Psychology). Wanted to fix the dysfunction in my family. I am a HUGE ADVOCATE for children!

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  @Karri1515

General CommentI don't think this song is referring to Jeremy as a nice example of one who had his revenge on everyone who made fun of him or whatever. I think that when the song says "King Jeremy the Wicked" it's talking about how Jeremy wished he could be, or thought he was, in his own world (his classmates' description of him pretty much meant that he was always "away" in his own thoughts), a world he created to escape the life he disliked so much.

Since he was also a quiet guy, the song causes impact when Eddie sings "Jeremy spoke in class today", which means he finally said (in his own way - suicide) to everyone, including the English teacher with whom he aparently had some issues, what he always wanted to say.

To be honest, I had no clue of what the song was about until today, when I decided to find out what it meant. When you learn that Jeremy and the whole story were real, you start to find the song and the video quite disturbing because you see the suicide from the vision of Jeremy (the problems with his parents and school), of his classmates ("Try to forget this, Try to erase this from the blackboard", the problems they probably had later from seeing the shocking scene of a suicide right in front of them) and of the other people, who saw a young life ending in a newspaper and who knew that the suicide didn't change anything on the rest of the world (in the video it shows how the weather was before and after Jeremy killed himself - nothing changed, other people are still living their lives and some don't even know who the boy was).

So, besides all of that, what I absorved from this whole story was that suicide only reduces to 0 any chances of passing though harsh times and proving to yourself that you're strong enough to find other ways of solving your problems. Everyone has problems, what matters is how you face them

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  @tamyres1991
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  "Since he was also a quiet guy, the song causes impact when Eddie sings "Jeremy spoke in class today", which means he finally said (in his own way - suicide) to everyone, including the English teacher with whom he aparently had some issues, what he always wanted to say."
  
  Not quite right - that's a line that's directly about him shooting himself. Back in the day, the long-running slogan for Smith & Wesson guns was "When A Smith & Wesson talks, everybody listens", hence "Jeremy spoke in class today"

  Flag SgtReznoron July 26, 2009  

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  @tamyres1991 it also shows that a young life got sick of shit humans....to me it highlights the error of our ways more than showing you the right way.

  Flag greenpumpkinon May 25, 2017  

General CommentThis song at first i did not know what it was saying after reading some comments about it i got an idea of what was going. I think it mostly is talking about a kid and his rage building up until he finally spoke out and acted on his rage. Great song

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  @code0500