Daughter - Remastered

"Daughter" was written from the perspective of a girl with a learning disability called dyslexia, and her mother who doesn't understand the condition. Eddie Vedder explained in Pearl Jam - The Illustrated Story: "The child in that song obviously has a learning difficulty. And it's only in the last few years that they've actually been able to diagnose these learning disabilities that before were looked at as misbehavior, as just outright rebelliousness. But no one knew what it was. And these kids, because they seemed unable or reluctant to learn, they'd end up getting the s--t beaten outta them. The song ends with this idea of the shades going down so that the neighbors can't see what happens next. What hurts about s--t like that is that it ends up defining people's lives. They have to live with that abuse for the rest of their lives. Good, creative people are just f--king destroyed."

This song was originally titled "Brother" (not the "Brother" heard on the Lost Dogs album). In the Pearl Jam Twenty documentary, Eddie Vedder and Stone Gossard are seen working it up with that title. "Brother" is something you might call a friend, so it became "Daughter" to remove that ambiguity.

The song vamps out very gradually at the end, which wouldn't work very well live, so when they play "Daughter" in concert, Pearl Jam typically extends the instrumental break and Eddie Vedder improvises until the song ends. Vedder might start a chant, recite a poem, or sing part of another song - it's different every time. In 2014 in Milan, he sang "Let It Go" from Frozen in this section. Eight days after Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain died, they added Neil Young's "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" to the end because Cobain referenced that song's lyrics in his suicide letter ("it's better to burn out than to fade away"). One controversial "Daughter" mutation came at Lollapalooza 2007 when Vedder referenced President George W. Bush with the lyrics, "George Bush leave this world alone, George Bush find yourself another home." AT&T webcast the event and muted this part of the song. Pearl Jam later challenged them on that, saying it was censorship. AT&T apologized.