"Elderly Woman..." started out as a poem written by Eddie Vedder. It's about two people (possibly lovers) who are reunited after many years, one of whom stayed in the same town all her life, and the other who left. It's a story of aging and regret.
Nine of the 11 songs on Pearl Jam's debut album have just one word in the title ("Black," "Alive," "Jeremy"...). Eddie Vedder used the surplus on this song, which is on the band's second album, Vs. In a 1993 interview with the radio show Rockline, he explained that the unusual title came to his mind because he was "fed up with one word titles."
In the Pearl Jam biography by Mick Wall, Vedder said of this song: "It's kind of about a lady, and she's getting on in years, and she's stuck in this small town. Small towns fascinate me: You either struggle like hell to get out, to some people want to stay 'cause then they're the big fish in the small pond, and then others just kind of get stuck there. So here she is working in this little place, and then an old flame comes in, and he's probably driving a nice car and looking kind of sharp - not a fancy car, but he's moved on. And then she sees him, and at first she doesn't even remember who he is, and then she realizes who it is. She's just too embarrassed to say 'hello.'"
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