March Madness 2024 - Brain of J wins

[Monkey_Driven]

I couldn't keep up with the tournament so didn't see who was facing who, but you guys voting Brain of J as the best ever Pearl Jam song is just insane T_T

That's why it's important to vote in elections, mike

[Leatherhead]

I couldn't keep up with the tournament so didn't see who was facing who, but you guys voting Brain of J as the best ever Pearl Jam song is just insane T_T

Insanely awesome.

[digster]

This song is excellent, and it's simultaneously an incredibly-constructed and considered song that also sounds like it took them 10 minutes to write.

[VinylGuy]

great winner!!

amazing song

[Brett]

Part of the fun of March Madness is that sometimes unexpected songs win. I usually find myself tuning out in the later rounds when popular consensus starts to rally around the songs that are almost universally loved. I think of "Brain of J" is close to that hallowed group, but still feels a little bit like a dark horse. Plus, it's a really cool song with the way it balances the full throttle aggressiveness of most of the song with wide open playfulness of the bridge. The bridge is of course shorter than the rest of the song, but it has an outsized impact on the tone and power of the whole piece.

[mikejasond]

This is the same band that wrote Even Flow, Black, Alive, Daughter, Given to Fly, Corduroy, Release, Elderly Woman, Jeremy, Immortality....I still have no idea how Brain of J can top the list. It's a good but fairly forgettable song all things considered, though a very good opener for an album. But it's so good as an opener precisely because it's just sort of there as an introduction, rather than a stand-out track.

[mikejasond]

I couldn't keep up with the tournament so didn't see who was facing who, but you guys voting Brain of J as the best ever Pearl Jam song is just insane T_T

That's why it's important to vote in elections, mike

Yes, a lesson learned

[liebzz]

Let’s hope we get another next year, and surely the winner will be an entirely other song - perhaps stip will get Alive over the top, or Corduroy will break through again, or our collective delirium over Dark Matter pushes a new song into the final round. Hell, if we started this tournament again right now we’d probably find a at to get a different result.

[Monkey_Driven]

the real winners are the friends we made along the way

[Kevin Davis]

Unless you made friends with any Pearl Jam songs that aren’t “Brain of J”

[Monkey_Driven]

Unless you made friends with any Pearl Jam songs that aren’t “Brain of J”

yeah, they're fucking losers

[liebzz]

Unless you made friends with any Pearl Jam songs that aren’t “Brain of J”

yeah, they're fucking losers

Bigly.

[Leatherhead]

This is the same band that wrote Even Flow, Black, Alive, Daughter, Given to Fly, Corduroy, Release, Elderly Woman, Jeremy, Immortality....I still have no idea how Brain of J can top the list. It's a good but fairly forgettable song all things considered, though a very good opener for an album. But it's so good as an opener precisely because it's just sort of there as an introduction, rather than a stand-out track.

BoJ is better than all those songs, except maybe Immortality.

[joostone]

Brain of J! It would have never won a league but it can be an outsider in a knock-off tournament!

First win for Mike McCready after Ed and mostly Stone were previous winner. Jeff should win next year!

[stip]

This is the same band that wrote Even Flow, Black, Alive, Daughter, Given to Fly, Corduroy, Release, Elderly Woman, Jeremy, Immortality....I still have no idea how Brain of J can top the list. It's a good but fairly forgettable song all things considered, though a very good opener for an album. But it's so good as an opener precisely because it's just sort of there as an introduction, rather than a stand-out track.

BoJ is better than all those songs, except maybe Immortality.

That's the kind of nonsense you can only get around these parts. But that's the madness. Anything can happen!

[McParadigm]

It took me years to warm up to the released version of brain of j.

I mean, I never disliked it. But I’d been listening to the live version (quite a lot) for several years by that point, so my gut reaction was that putting that song in a studio was like feeding the t rex a tethered goat. It’s a forced domestication that goes against nature.

Meanwhile, the Yield sessions had produced so many wonderful sounds and songs that it bothered me to have this very old song parked in a new song’s reserved space.

I came around in a big way, and I like it quite a lot now. If I could only keep 4 songs off that album, I’d take DTE, Pilate, No Way, and Low Light…but I’d be more upset about the loss of Brain of J than all the rest of the songs combined (and I love that album).