Pearl Jam “Waiting for Stevie”
I’m of two minds about Andrew Watt’s involvement in Pearl Jam’s new record Dark Matter as producer and co-writer. On the one hand, I have yet to be impressed by Watt and find that his collaborations with much older legend-status acts like Ozzy Osbourne, The Rolling Stones, and now both Eddie Vedder solo and Pearl Jam feels like the human equivalent of training an AI on those artists’ material. You don’t get new ideas from a Watt production, you just get something closer to the average listener’s expectations of the artist he’s producing. Watt is a fan surrogate, and I think he’s attractive to major labels who want to get the most commercial potential out of...