Original video located here. Accessed 10th July 2026
Song title: Education
Artist: Pearl Jam
Year: 2000
Why I like this song:
Recently I've been listening to Pearl Jam's Binaural.
To me, Binaural is a strange beast: It came at a time when Pearl Jan was clearly the last of the grunge era acts still standing. It was part of the evolutionary progress that came from No Code and Yield. And it has gone down in history as one of the more divisive albums in the Pearl Jam catalogue - but then again, the same could be said for any of Pearl Jam's post 90's output.
But Binaural presents an interesting challenge: It is something of a given that the best songs were left off the album. This point has been proven with the Lost Dogs compilation and Jeff Ament saying so himself.
However a challenge presents itself by forming one's own track listing: Ditching the weaker songs off of Binaural and replacing them with the B-sides.
With this mind, I did find the following track listing and based my listening experience of Binaural around it:
- Breakerfall
- Sad
- Hitchhiker
- Light Years
- Nothing As it Seems
- Thin Air
- Of the Girl
- Education
- Sleight of Hand
- Soon Forget
- Fatal
- Parting Ways
(source)
Does this make for a superior album? Well given that I skipped the weaker songs off of Binaural I can't say. But does it make for a better Pearl Jam album?
As mentioned above, it seems that the quality of Pearl Jam's post-90s output is up for debate but this experiment does show that there were some really superb songs there and this period deserves more credit then it is usually granted.
Granted fans shouldn't have to correct mistakes but, if mods and fan edits of films have shown, fan power shouldn't be underestimated.