Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder Didn’t Want to Release the Song ‘Better Man’

Though it's one of their most well-known songs, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder didn't want to release the song "Better Man" — and here's why.

The track was featured on the rockers' third studio album Vitalogy, which came out in November of 1994. By the time it was released, Pearl Jam had already gone to war with Ticketmaster, canceling their summer tour as a way of boycotting the event company and filing an antitrust complaint against it as well.

They'd also stopped making videos for MTV after the "Jeremy" video came out in '92.

Pearl Jam appeared on The Howard Stern Show earlier this week in celebration of the release of their 12th album Dark Matter, and Stern questioned Vedder about why he didn't want "Better Man" to come out back in the day.

"The story goes that the record producer [Brendan O'Brien] said to you, 'Ed, this is a great song. It's gonna be a hit song,' and you heard 'hit song' and you said, 'Fuck you, I'm not putting this out then.' I don't even understand that story," Stern pressed as the vocalist and the rest of the band laughed.

"Well, I do remember that," Vedder said. "At that point, we had taken ourselves out of working with MTV... We had taken away our bright light a little it by staying off that. We were trying to control our situation to one where we felt was sustainable."

The vocalist added that the band's biggest concern was their music, and that they had made these decisions specifically to protect themselves and their music from the perils of the spotlight.

"So steering away from that stuff and trying to manicure this level of, I guess you'd call it fame, that was the one thing we were conscious of when we were working," he continued.

READ MORE: Seven Things We Love About Pearl Jam's New Album 'Dark Matter'

Vedder recalled that when O'Brien complimented "Better Man" back in the day, he saw everyone else in the band put their heads down, because they knew it meant that the singer would be against it.

See the clip below.

Despite Vedder's hesitations, "Better Man" reached No. 1 on the Rock Songs chart — where it stayed for eight consecutive weeks — and No. 13 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart.

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder Didn't Want to Release the Song "Better Man"