Ten is the debut studio album by the American rock band Pearl Jam, released on August 27, 1991, through Epic Records. Following the dissolution of their previous band Mother Love Bone in 1990, bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard began rehearsing with new guitarist Mike McCready. The group recorded a five-song instrumental demo tape that included contributions from Matt Cameron on drums. Copies of the demo were eventually given to drummer Dave Krusen and vocalist Eddie Vedder, both of whom were invited to audition for the band in Seattle. Many of the songs on Ten were instrumental jams or reworked Mother Love Bone songs for which Vedder provided lyrics. Despite its reputation as a quintessential grunge album, Ten is often noted for displaying a stronger classic rock influence than other contemporary grunge releases, drawing comparisons to the work of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. The album is also characterised as having an anthemic, rich sound. Ten was not an immediate commercial success, but by late 1992, it had reached number two on the Billboard 200. The album produced three hit singles: “Alive”, “Even Flow”, and “Jeremy”. “Jeremy” became one of Pearl Jam’s best-known songs, and received nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance at the 35th Grammy Awards. MTV put the video for “Jeremy” into heavy rotation; it received four awards at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year and Best Group Video. In 2021, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Beyond its role in consolidating the mainstream success of grunge rock in the early 1990s, Ten is generally considered to have been instrumental in the rise and dominance of alternative rock throughout the decade. The album has since been ranked by several publications as one of the greatest albums of all time. By February 2013, it had sold 13 million copies in the US, becoming the 22nd record to do so in the Nielsen SoundScan era, and has been certified 13× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Ten remains Pearl Jam’s most commercially successful album.

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