Yellow Ledbetter

This song has been in my head a lot lately, mostly because I've been trying to learn it on the guitar. It is by Pearl Jam and was a released as a b-side that was so good that it still found it's way onto the radio. The lyrics are pretty indecipherable as it seems Eddie Vedder is kind of mumbling the whole time (when they wrote the song, he just started mumbling to try to figure out a melody and it just stayed that way). However, there is a story behind it.
Eddie Vedder had a friend who received a yellow letter in the mail, informing him that his brother was killed in the Gulf War. They decided to take a walk together to clear his head when they passed by someone's house who was very patriotic, displaying flags all around the outside of their house. This patriotic person happened to be sitting on their porch and since the grunge phase was the kind of style for most teenagers at the time, this patriotic person looked at them very disapprovingly. So there was this kind of anger and irony they were dealing with, that if only this patriotic person had known the reason they were on a walk in the first place, they would have looked at them completely different.
I'm not telling this story because I'm trying to make a political statement or anything, but I'm just trying to relate the sadness and loss that is in the song. The guitar playing is very reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix's style and the solo in the middle of the song is still one of my all-time favorite guitar solos. It's not flashy at all but it just perfectly emotes the whole feeling of loss and enduring that the song is trying to evoke. It's such a beautiful song. Hope you enjoy.