The song takes its main inspiration from a newspaper article about a 15-year-old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle from Richardson, Texas who killed himself in front of his English classmates at... “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam is one of the band’s most unsettling and emotional songs. The song’s meaning centers on a real-life tragedy: a teenage boy who took his own life in front of his classmates.

Understanding the Context

Eddie Vedder wrote the lyrics after reading about the story in a newspaper.