World Wide Suicide

World Wide Suicide è stato il primo singolo estratto dall'omonimo album dei Pearl Jam, uscito il 2 maggio 2006. Il testo della canzone denota rabbia nei confronti della guerra in Iraq e il governo statunitense.

Verso la fine di febbraio la band fece un video di 15 secondi disponibile su internet, che fu poi trasmesso da numerose radio nord-amercicane. Quest'assaggio rivelò subito un sound hard rock e un ritorno alla dominanza vocale di Eddie Vedder, come nei precedenti album. La prima uscita radio avvenne sulla stazione KNDD di Seattle il 3 marzo 2006. Il 6 marzo la canzone poteva essere scaricata gratuitamente dal sito ufficiale della band, mentre il giorno successivo fu messo in onda alle radio. Da questo giorno fino al 12 marzo la canzone fu trasmessa circa 1900 sulle stazione americane di rock moderno, rendendola la canzone di genere alternative rock che si è diffusa più velocemente negli USA in tutto il 2006. Il 14 marzo il singolo fu messo in vendita nei negozi online, in formato digitale, accompagnato dalla b-side "Unemployable", contenuta anch'essa nel nuovo album.

Wikipedia




"World Wide Suicide" is the first single from Pearl Jam's eighth studio album, Pearl Jam. The lyrics depict anger against the war in Iraq, and criticize the US government in a subtle manner.

In late February, the band made a 15-second clip of the song available on the Internet, which was then played on numerous North American radio stations. The snippet revealed a hard-rocking sound with a noted return to the dominant vocal styles of Vedder's earlier work. It was first played on US radio on March 3, 2006 on KNDD (Seattle). On March 6, 2006 "World Wide Suicide" was made available via the band's official site to download for free. It was released to general airplay on March 7. Between then and March 12, it was played over 1900 times on modern rock stations in the United States, meaning that it was one of the fastest-growing alternative rock songs of 2006 in the US. The single hit digital music stores on March 14 accompanied by the upbeat B-Side "Unemployable", also on the new album.

It entered the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart at #3, making it one of the highest debuts of the last several years and became the band's first #1 on that chart since "Who You Are" in 1996. "World Wide Suicide" was also the band's first #1 single of any sort in 8 years (since "Given to Fly" hit #1 in 1998). The song spent a total of three weeks at #1 on the Modern Rock chart. Without selling any hard copies of the single or distributing CDs to radio programmers, consultants and industry contacts, "World Wide Suicide" became the first digitally delivered #1 song in Canadian radio history.

On April 15, 2006, "World Wide Suicide" was premiered live on Saturday Night Live. This marked Pearl Jam's first appearance on SNL since 1994. On April 19, 2006, "World Wide Suicide" was played during an episode of CSI: NY entitled "Run Silent, Run Deep". "World Wide Suicide" was also transcribed in the October 2006 issue of Guitar World. The song was named #11 in Rolling Stone's "The 100 Best Songs of the Year" for 2006 and was also named #54 in the New York Post's "206 best songs to download of 2006."

Live performances of "World Wide Suicide" can be found on the Live at the Gorge 05/06 box set. A performance of the song mixed from various dates in Italy is also included on the DVD Immagine In Cornice.

A music video was made for the song directed by Danny Clinch. The video features footage shot in 2006 of the band performing the song in a studio interspersed with clips shot in 2005 of a Chilean street performer (Sebastián González, 24 years old) whom the band met while touring South America. The latter portions of the video were filmed in November 2005 in the bathrooms of their Chile concert location San Carlos de Apoquindo Stadium.

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