Pearl Jam and Harper Vedder cover Taylor Swift’s ‘The Best Day’

1 October, 2024

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and his daughter Harper Vedder as well as Taylor Swift. Credit Jim Bennett and Graham Denholm via GETTY

Pearl Jam teamed up with Harper Vedder for a cover of Taylor Swift‘s ‘The Best Day’ at Ohana Fest this past weekend.

The music bash – which was founded by the band’s frontman Eddie Vedder– took place on September 27 through September 29 in Dana Point, California and saw the likes of Devo, Sting, Alanis Morissette, Maren Morris, Jenny Lewis, Turnpike Troubadours, and the Breeders all perform.

During their headline set on Sunday (September 29), they treated their fans to a selection of their tracks such as ‘Mind Your Manners’, ‘MFC’ and ‘Wreckage’ before dusting off ‘Big Wave’, playing the song for the first time since 2016 and bringing out Andrew Watt for a performance of ‘Rearviewmirror’.

For their first encore of the night, Vedder brought out his youngest daughter Harper to sing a mashup of ‘Last Kiss’ and Swift’s ‘The Best Day’ from her second LP ‘Fearless’. “We’ve had so much diversity on both these stages in the last few days,” Eddie told the crowd, adding: “And we just had special guest Andrew Watt playing guitar on ‘Rearviewmirror.’ I realized it had been a while since we had a powerful young woman up onstage with us. And so my pal Harper here is going to help me out.”

Elsewhere at the festival, Pearl Jam played their 1990s deep cut ‘The Whale Song’ for the first time ever. 

The song was originally released on the band’s 1999 compilation ‘Music For Our Mother Ocean 3’, and was later included on their 2003’s ‘Lost Dogs’. The song was written by the band’s drummer at the time Jack Irons, and for this performance, they were joined by Jack’s son Zach Irons.

Earlier this month, the band played a cover of Ted Nugent’s 1975 track ‘Stranglehold’ in Baltimore, with Vedder ad-libbing: I don’t own a gun/ I don’t ever want to own a gun/ I don’t own a gun, never want to own a gun.”

Nugent, who is an outspoken pro-gun ownership activist, responded online by writing: “Hey Eddie join me on my RAV [Real America’s Voice show] spirit campfire to discuss how your insane liberal policies have created an explosion in engineered violent recidivism while you fight to disarm helpless innocent citizens.”

NME caught Pearl Jam’s performance at Mad Cool 2024 this summer, writing: “There is no doubt that the band aren’t new to these huge headline shows, and the structure is clearly one that has been refined throughout their years on the road. However, with this performance, Pearl Jam prove that this is far from a copy-and-paste set, and the sentiments about their deep connection to Spanish fans are by no means hollow words.”

In other news, this week, the former Pearl Jam guitarist Josh Klinghoffer pleaded not guilty to the charge of vehicular manslaughter in court in California.

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