I don’t know, I always liked the song “Jeremy”, but it never made me want to kill myself, even when I was feeling depressed. Ditto “Hey Man, Nice Shot.”
I see it as a metaphor for being in an abusive relationship. Every day with that abuser is a game of Russian Roulette. You never know if today will be the one that kills you (or breaks your bone, or gives you a black eye) or if today will be one where he’s peaches and cream and nothing bad happens. You never know if the things you do will set him off or if he won’t mind. You never know if folding his laundry for him will make him happy because you did it for him, or if he’ll beat the crap out of you because you did it wrong.
It’s a risky, dangerous situation to be in one of those types of relationships. And it’s kind of like playing Russian Roulette…
Then again, it’s entirely possible I’m reading too much into it. I mean, it’s Rhianna for Og’s sake.
Actually it’s Rihanna. I die inside when I see it, too.
Hijack, but something I didn’t fully appreciate until years after the song was released (and I love Pearl Jam, so it’s not like I didn’t hear it plenty of times) is that “Jeremy” is told neither from Jeremy’s perspective nor from that of a third-person narrator. Either of those would have been a pretty obvious choice, but instead the narrator is a former classmate of Jeremy’s…and not a friend either: “Clearly I remember picking on the boy.” While the song is primarily about Jeremy, a disturbed, neglected, and bullied boy who eventually kills himself, it’s also about the classmate’s realization that Jeremy’s situation was worse than he’d understood at the time and that he himself had probably played a role in driving Jeremy to suicide.
IIRC, didn’t Veddar say he knew a kid in his school similiar to Jeremy, (but he didn’t actually kill himself IN school)
Yeah, I was only thirteen when the song came out, so I didn’t realize it either. Pretty disturbing, great song.
Wait, here is what Wiki says – it’s sort of a compilation. Veddar read about a boy who shot himself in front of his classmates, the other was a kid Veddar actually did know:
I only brought it up initially because I hate it when people blame songs and movies and such for people committing certain acts. Unless we’re talking about really little kidswatching Beavis and Butthead and then playing with matches or something, I really, REALLY despise this attitude.
People usually aren’t driven by a song to committ a certain act, are they?
Sadly, I live in a world where people are that stupid.
What should we care if they do?
Why the quotes around stupid? Are you of the opinion that they were *not *stupid?
So “Rihanna” is pronounced “Ree-ahnna”, not “Ree-hanna”? :eek:
According to herself, she pronounces it Ree-ANN-a but Ree-ON-a is also correct. As long as the “h” isn’t voiced.
Yes, yes I do watch too much VH-1. If I didn’t, how could I answer all your burning questions!
Finally saw the vid - didn’t disturb me, I was expecting something more graphic.
Didn’t like it much, either. There’s a certain something in recent R&B vids that I don’t like - a fetich scene-derived aesthetic I see in Rihanna, Beyonce, Ga Ga, Shakira… it really irks me. One or two vids in that style would be cool, but they all start to bleed into one, stylistically. Kind of like the vids all featuring studded leather and spiked hair in the 80s, you know?
[Continuing hijack.]
I knew the backstory of the song, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that it struck me that having the narrator be a former classmate (presumably now grown) who had bullied Jeremy was an interesting choice on Vedder’s part, and more sophisticated than I’d appreciated. It’s not just “Here’s a terrible thing that happened, isn’t it sad, aren’t you angry at the people who are to blame”, although that’s largely what I got out of it as a teenager. It’s also about realizing “I have done things that hurt others more than I intended or understood at the time.”
[Back on topic]
*Not unless the act is (or seems) pretty harmless or the person is unstable to begin with. I mean, dance crazes are usually motivated by a song, and a reference in a song might boost sales of a particular product, but anyone who’d point a gun at themselves solely because it was in a song has clearly got problems. As you say, young kids are an exception because they don’t have a realistic understanding of how dangerous some things can be, but if a young kid has unsupervised access to a loaded handgun then that’s the real issue, not a song.