Adam 12

11am - 4pm

Jack's last album with Pearl Jam.

February 3, 1998: Pearl Jam Yield hits record store shelves. Because 25 years ago, we were still hitting record stores on release days.

 

I was working part-time at legendary Boston alternative station WFNX in February of 1998. I had just started as a weekend DJ during the holiday season, but I’d been interning for FNX Music Director Laurie Gail for about a year at the time. So I was pretty plugged in to the flow of music coming into the radio station, making it to the ears of the Music Director and Program Director, and eventually making it on the air for the DJs to play.

 

Yield‘s first single was “Given To Fly,” and at the time it was considered a return to form. It’s funny to think about that now, as Pearl Jam has been band for over 30 years and, at the time, they didn’t even have a decade of service under their grungy belts. But Yield was the band’s fifth album, so I guess there was enough of a sample size for both music critics and fans to form an opinion. And Pearl Jam was still an enormously popular band in 1998, even though we’d moved on to the Third Wave of grunge and the definition of what was considered “alternative” was continuing to expand.

 

Pearl Jam Yield Turns 25

It’s impossible to talk about Yield without contrasting it with the album that came before it: 1996’s No Code. I took part in a round table discussion back in 2021 when we celebrated No Code‘s 25th anniversary and Ten‘s 30th. I had this to say about No Code:

“I think that they tested the limits with No Code. They saw that commercial radio wouldn’t necessarily play everything they released in heavy rotation, so they came back with some tighter friendlier songs on Yield.”

 

Did they ever. Take it from someone who was on the radio and playing the songs: both “Given To Fly” and “Wishlist” were in heavy rotation for months at WFNX and competitor WBCN for the bulk of 1998. Hell, even WAAF was playing the hell out of the Yield singles. Revisit those two below, then see where they landed on our Pearl Jam Top 50.

 

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