Best of 2008 - #9

Society – Eddie Vedder

Eddie Vedder laid out one of the most solid albums in recent years when he did the soundtrack for Into the Wild, which was in itself the best movie I saw in 2008. If you’re familiar with the movie, you know the story of Chris McCandless, the young man who takes leave of his white-collar, white-washed suburban existence and heads due west on an existential journey. This song serves as the protest that fuels Chris:

“It’s a mystery to me. We have a greed with which we have agreed. And you think you have to want more than you need. Until you have it all you won’t be free. Society, you are a crazy breed. I hope you aren’t lonely without me.”

Two motifs strike me within this song. One is the intimate sound of Vedder’s voice – brilliantly communicated throughout the whole album – that speaks Chris’ mind in the scenes where he travels further into himself. The second is the loneliness of this song, the sadness. It holds both the melancholy of a person who has to say goodbye to someone very dear to him, even if that person has caused a great deal of pain. But, as it ends with the line “I hope you’re not lonely without me”, what is really being said through Vedder is that Chris himself is bound for loneliness – a loneliness that will develop from severed ties to the outside world. For when he seeks to be loosed from the ills of society, he also becomes unbound from others and the connections that make him human.



Wes