One single instrument, one single voice, and yet written so well that it empowers you in a way that a whole orchestra would sweat it’s brow to succeed at. The simple and soothing melody just glides through your ears and gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling in your gut: take a deep breath and enjoy the simplicity and emotion of Eddie Vedder’s Guaranteed, written for “Into The Wild”.
To begin with, I just couldn’t go without mentioning that fabulous pick: a bass line and melody tuned in with Vedder’s voice. The lyrics are so powerful, uplifting and universal but yet still abstract in their own way “Circles they grow and they swallow people whole […] A mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul”. The words weave together so many different themes like love, the simplicity of life, time passing “Wind in my hair I feel part of everywhere” (beautiful line by the way) and especially, hiding behind the simple melody, a strong critique of society. My favorite bit of this social satire is “I know the rules but the rules do not know me”. So personal but so brilliantly valid for any person out there. I love the way it describes the immensity of life.
Another important aspect of this song for me is Eddie Vedder’s voice. At first, I couldn’t stand it, but I grew to like the crackle and rumple in it: imperfections like that make music so much more touching and approachable. It makes it real.
This song was written for the movie “Into The Wild” which is definitely one of my favorite films ever. It’s the story of a young man who is fed up with society and decides to go out into the wild and face great big Alaska armed with nothing but a rusty old broken caravan. It is so terribly thought provoking, a beautiful, brilliant, marvelous portrait of existence that widens your perspective on life a whole lot. For me, Guaranteed is the song that represents that trait of the film the most throughout all of the soundtrack.
Just makes you want to grasp life: go make lemonade out of those lemons.