How to Format Lyrics:

  • Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
  • Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
  • Use italics (<i>lyric</i>) and bold (<b>lyric</b>) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
  • If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

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About

Genius Annotation

“Yellow Ledbetter” may very well be one of the most-debated songs in Pearl Jam’s repertoire. There are at least 4 prominent theories circulating as to the origin of the song title alone, including (but not limited to):

  1. It is derived from the name of an old friend of Vedder’s from Chicago named Tim Ledbetter. (This theory is strongly supported in Kim Neely’s definitive biography Five Against One.)

  2. It is derived from an old tongue twister in which you try to say “yellow better, red better” as fast as you can. According to an explanation on Songfacts, “Just a few times repeated, the words become jumbled and you get ‘yellow ledbetter.’ The reason they named the song this is because the lyrics are indistinguishable just like the tongue twister.”

  3. It is a tribute to Huddie Ledbetter, also known as Lead Belly. Lead Belly was a pioneering Blues musician in the 1930s and, later, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, who recorded much of his music while in prison (at first, for carrying a pistol, then for killing one of his own relatives in a fight over a woman).

  4. It refers to someone receiving a letter and finding out their brother had died in the war (these types of communications were often sent in yellow envelopes). This theory is heavily supported by Eddie’s variation on the words during the Live at the Garden version of “Yellow Ledbetter,” in which he purportedly sang, “I don’t know whether my brother will be coming home in a box or a bag.”

Title aside, the lyrics of “Yellow Ledbetter” are fairly difficult to understand when heard live and even on the recorded version. Pearl Jam’s fan organization, the Ten Club, would regularly receive letters from fans begging them to provide some hint as to what the “real” lyrics were. Thus, when Epic released “Yellow Ledbetter” on a Japanese CD-single of “Daughter” in 1993, fans were scrambling to get their hands on the lyric booklet included with it. However, as Kim Neely points out in Five Against One, “Even the purportedly official lyrics were nonsensical… In fact, there never were any real lyrics. Eddie had simply improvised them during the one-take session, singing whatever phrases happened to pop into his head.”

Today, this ambiguity still leads to the creation of many ‘misheard lyrics’ videos, dedicated to humorously interpreting whatever Vedder is saying.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did Pearl Jam say about "Yellow Ledbetter"?
Genius Answer

McCready says of the song:

“That was written around the time of the first record (Ten). I think that was the second thing Ed and I wrote together. It came out of a jam in the studio and Ed didn’t really have any lyrics. He came up with some ideas right there on the spot, and that’s what we recorded. For some reason, it didn’t make it on Ten. I was kind of bummed at the time. I really wanted it to be on our first record. But at the time, I was really young and just happy to be around this situation, so I did whatever.”

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