Rival

"Rival" is about the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. On April 20, 1999, two students shot up the school, killing 12 kids and a teacher before killing themselves. The song was written by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, who came up with the lyric by imagining what the shooters were thinking the night before.

The song opens with the sounds of a snarling dog. This has some meaning to the song; dogs can be aggressive and volatile when they're angry, but also give off signals that something is wrong. In the Pearl Jam book Twenty, Stone Gossard says he was thinking about "what makes people kind of snap and how people are unpredictable."

The album is called Binaural because they used that recording technique on "Rival" and four other songs from the album. Binaural recording aims to simulate changes in where the sound is coming from, which works if you're wearing headphones and the sound is moving. The dog at the beginning of this song sounds like it's changing position, for example. That dog belonged to Tchad Blake, who produced the album. He's a big proponent of binaural recording.