Additional personnel: Walter Gray (cello); Rick Parashar (piano, organ, percussion).

Engineers: Dave Hills, Don Gilmore, Adrian Moore.

Recorded at London Bridge Studios, Seattle, Washington from March to April, 1991.

Personnel: Eddie Vedder (vocals); Mike McCready, Stone Gossard (guitar); Walter Gray (cello); Rick Parashar (piano, organ, percussion); Dave Krusen (drums); Tim Palmer (percussion).

Audio Mixer: Tim Palmer.

Recording information: London Bridge Studios, Seattle, WA (03/1991-04/1991).

Photographer: Lance Mercer.

Unknown Contributor Role: Tim Palmer.

Nirvana's Nevermind may have been the album that broke grunge and alternative rock into the mainstream, but there's no underestimating the role that Pearl Jam's Ten played in keeping them there. Nirvana's appeal may have been huge, but it wasn't universal; rock radio still viewed them as too raw and punky, and some hard rock fans dismissed them as weird misfits. In retrospect, it's easy to see why Pearl Jam clicked with a mass audience -- they weren't as metallic as Alice in Chains or Soundgarden, and of Seattle's Big Four, their sound owed the greatest debt to classic rock. With its intricately arranged guitar textures and expansive harmonic vocabulary, Ten especially recalled Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. But those touchstones might not have been immediately apparent, since -- aside from Mike McCready's Clapton/Hendrix-style leads -- every trace of blues influence has been completely stripped from the band's sound. Though they rock hard, Pearl Jam is too anti-star to swagger, too self-aware to puncture the album's air of gravity. Pearl Jam tackles weighty topics -- abortion, homelessness, childhood traumas, gun violence, rigorous introspection -- with an earnest zeal unmatched since mid-'80s U2, whose anthemic sound they frequently strive for. Similarly, Eddie Vedder's impressionistic lyrics often make their greatest impact through the passionate commitment of his delivery rather than concrete meaning. His voice had a highly distinctive timbre that perfectly fit the album's warm, rich sound, and that's part of the key -- no matter how cathartic Ten's tersely titled songs got, they were never abrasive enough to affect the album's accessibility. Ten also benefited from a long gestation period, during which the band honed the material into this tightly focused form; the result is a flawlessly crafted hard rock masterpiece. ~ Steve Huey

TEN, Pearl Jam's debut album, was released less than a month before Nirvana's NEVERMIND, and although it took longer to climb the pop charts it also hung around longer, eventually outselling its Seattle rival. Together, the two albums reinvigorated rock & roll, whose share of the pop marketplace had been slipping through the late 1980s. But while Nirvana's bruising punk rock was an all-out assault on the classic-rock dinosaur, Pearl Jam's accomplished hard rock was an attack from within the system.

The drawn-out, bluesy guitar riffing and anthemic choruses that dominated TEN instantly gave away roots in the same popular hard rock and heavy metal that Nirvana was intent on crushing. Indeed, before forming Pearl Jam, guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament (who between them wrote most of the music on TEN) were the core of two '70s-influenced metal bands, Green River and Mother Love Bone. But in place of the self-aggrandizing, larger-than-life singers that led most such bands, Gossard and Ament found Eddie Vedder, an explosive vocalist with a ravaged timbre more apt to identify with the abused and misunderstood children he was singing about (and to) than with any other rock stars.

After producer Brendan O'Brien remastered a few TEN tracks for the later greatest-hits collection, REARVIEWMIRROR, the band pressed him for years to remaster the entire album. In 2009, the band re-released TEN with O'Brien's remaster, a rendering that strips away the early '90s reverb and lays bare the scabrous edges in both the twin guitars and Vedder's voice. Including many extra tracks and paraphernalia, the many different versions of the reissue placed the official stamp of "classic" on a record that always had the air of one.