"The Fixer" is a song by Pearl Jam which was the first single taken from American alternative rock band Pearl Jam's ninth studio album, Backspacer.
The music was written by drummer Matt Cameron in 2008 and vocalist Eddie Vedder penned the lyrics.
The band debuted this in an excerpted form on July 14, 2009, during the Major League Baseball All-Star game.
The song featured in a Cameron Crowe-directed commercial for Target that Pearl Jam filmed at Seattle's Showbox. The band signed a deal with Target to be the exclusive megastore retailer for Backspacer in the United States.
This song became the foundation for Backspacer after Vedder came up with an edit of an arrangement that the band originally jammed without him.
Guitarist Stone Gossard commented to Billboard: "My personal interpretation is that it's about how [Vedder] makes our songs work. When someone inspires him, he's an incredible collaborator."
This debuted at #56 on the Billboard Hot 100, Pearl Jam's highest ever entry on the chart.
Despite Eddie Vedder's bandmates seeming to think this song is referring to him, the frontman told Billboard magazine he feels it refers to everybody.
Said Vedder: "I read something Stone said in relation to the band, and he might be right to a certain extent. If it were to be about the band, then it would actually be more about each different song. But that's not fixing; that's just directing it somewhere. I'm thinking more on a worldview or a community view. I read this quote from Rick Danko, maybe from before The Last Waltz. He said, 'We used to think with music that we could save the world, but now we're old enough and wise enough to know that all we can change is our community.'"
Vedder explained that this song is about male/female relationships to the Toronto Globe and Mail.
He said: "Men, we all think we can fix anything. It's not necessarily a good thing. In a relationship, a woman will say 'This is wrong,' and we're like, 'I'll fix that, don't worry about it, we can fix it.' These wonderful people, the woman you're in a relationship with, they don't want you to fix it. They just want you to listen to what's happening: 'Don't fix it, I want you to own this with me – feel it.' This is a reminder song to me, to stop fixing."
Drummer Matt Cameron originally wrote the music for this lean-riff rocker. Guitarist Stone Gossard recalled to Billboard: "With that song, Matt came in with a riff and we worked out a few different arrangements. Then Ed took it and re-arranged it with Pro Tools, to get the parts he needed in the right place. You don't want to get a final arrangement for a song before he's had a chance to screw around with it, because once he gets it, it can all change. What you thought was a chorus can end up being a verse. There was a real collaborative effort on the whole album. Ed, in particular, worked with everyone on their songs."
Gossard added: "It was Ed that really made the arrangement of the song. Matt had two or three more parts. When you don't have a vocal, you just put it all in there and hope for the best in terms of your arranging skills. Literally we went away and left Ed with it the night after we recorded it, and he came back with this three-minute pop song. He probably cut half the parts out and re-arranged it."
Billboard magazine asked Vedder if the album title is a typewriter reference. He replied; "Yeah, it started with the typewriter. I'm not sure when they changed it, but typewriters from the '40s and '30s, instead of 'backspace,' it said 'backspacer.' And we don't have those keys on computers. It's just 'delete' (laughs). That's a cleaner way of getting rid of your mistake, but with backspacer, you actually have to kind of look at your mistake. I was actually working on an art project with typewriter keys and I had a number of them from different typewriters. I saw that they were making jewelry out of typewriter keys years ago, when I'd look for typewriters. For me it was like shark fin soup: you're killing typewriters for a bracelet! I had an idea to make a mosaic using the typewriter keys, like a sculpture, so I was surrounded by all these keys. That key just kind of jumped out."
Backspacer was produced by Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against the Machine). O'Brien has collaborated with the Seattle band before, having manned the boards on several of their 1990s albums. The two parties first reunited in 2008 to record a cover of the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me" for the soundtrack to the Adam Sandler film Reign Over Me.
Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament told Billboard magazine: "Brendan works really fast. He's a super pro. I've always felt, working with him, that he understood me as a bass player and that's not always easy. A lot of producers are there to please the singer. But I've always had a great rapport with him. I can tell him I want something to sound like the O'Jays or Led Zeppelin or PJ Harvey and he gets it."
In Rolling Stone's 2009 Readers' Poll, this song was voted the Best Single of the year. In a double whammy for the Seattle band, Backspacer scored Best Album.
"R U Mine?" • "Shepherd of Fire" • "Something from Nothing" • "Back to the Shack" • "Rize of the Fenix" • "I Still Believe" • "Divide" • "Run for Cover" • "Throne" • "Mona Lisa" • "The Reflex" • "Move Over" • "Would You Still Be There" • "Sugar, You" • "Cowboys From Hell (Live from Monsters in Moscow Festival)" • "Summertime Boy" • "What If I Was Nothing" • "High Road" • "September" • "Backwards Company" • "One Big Holiday" • "Jane" • "Gimme Chocolate!!" • "King for a Day" • "Rebellion" • "All the Rage Back Home" • "The Mephistopheles of Los Angeles" • "My Own Eyes" • "Don't Wanna Fight" • "Failure" • "Trainwreck 1979" • "Follow Me Down" • "Cryin" • "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" • "Eat The Rich" • "Love In An Elevator" • "Seasons of Wither" • "Rats in the Cellar" • "People Are People" • "What You Need" • "Always Something There To Remind Me" • "Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)" • "Lust for Life" • "Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)" • "Like A Stone" • "Awake" • "Lying From You" • "Sing" • "Riptide" • "Shut Up and Dance" • "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" • "Runnin' With The Devil" • "Hot For Teacher" • Dance The Night Away" • "And The Cradle Will Rock..." • "Unchained" • "Dreams" • "Electric Love" • "Cocoon" • "First" • "Renegades" • "The Coma Machine" • "Heir Apparent" • "Nevermore" • "Ex's and Oh's" • "Irresistible" • "Stitches" • "Different Colors" • "Can't Feel My Face" • "Adventure of a Lifetime" • "On My Mind" • "What Do You mean?" • "Drag Me Down" • "Leave The Night On" • "Thank God for Girls"
"The Vengeful One" • "Immortalized" • "Warrior" • "My Wave" • "Wicked Garden" • "Hunger Strike" • "Get Lucky" • "Heartbeat Song" • "Hey Ya!" • "Locked Out of Heaven" • "Treasure" • "Dancing With Myself" • "Love Stinks" • "I Hate Myself For Loving You" • "speed fighter" • "Still The One" • "Got Your Six" • "Thunder & Lightning" • "Figure It Out" • "Chicken Fried" • "Homegrown" • "The Wind" • "What Makes You Beautiful" • "Never Enough" • "Best Song Ever" • "Story of My Life" • "Zombie" • "Dreams" • "Ode To My Family" • "She Looks So Perfect" • "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)" • "Everybody Talks" • "Blown Away" • "That's My Kind Of Night" • "House Party" • "Day Late Dollar Short" • "Lodger" • "The Heist" • "Blink" • "Signs" • "What's Your Favorite Dinosaur?" • "Synthesized (Inside Your Mind Mix)" • "No Mercy" • "Seven" • "Cake By The Ocean" • "Stressed Out" • "The Hills" • "Sorry" • "Boyfriend" • "Love Yourself" • "Redneck" • "What I Like About You" • "Dope Noise" • "Don't Do Me Like That" • "Learning To Fly" • "Breakfast At Tiffany's" • "Take Me To Church" • "Found Out About You" • "Hey Jealousy" • "We're Not Gonna Take It" • "Cherry Pie" • "Hook" • "Famous Last Words" • "All These Things That I've Done" • "Africa" • "Lips Of An Angel" • "Where Is My Mind?" • "Rock This Town" • "Jumper" • "Uptown Girl" • "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)" • "Pompeii" • "I Gotta Feeling" • "Mr. Jones" • "Blurred Lines" • "Heaven Is A Place on Earth" • "Bad Catholics" • "If You Could Only See" • "Everything You Want" • "I'm Yours" • "Starships" • "What About Love?" • "Seventeen" • "Dirt Road Anthem" • "All For You" • "Dystopia" • "Road To Nowhere" • "The Devil In I" • "The Sound Of Silence" • "HandClap" • "Happy Song" • "Safe and Sound" • "Save Tonight" • "Sweater Wheater" • "Little Talks" • "Happy" • "Chandelier" • "Feel Invincible" • "King of the World" • "Hold My Hand" • "Only Wanna Be With You" • "Let Her Cry" • "Lovesong" • "Time After Time" • "She Drives Me Crazy" • "Complicated" • "My Happy Ending" • "What The Hell" • "24K Magic" • "Hymn for the Weekend" • "Still Breathing" • "Heathens" • "Ride" • "Royals" • "All About That Bass" • "The Greatest" • "Shadow" • "Bethany" • "Black Streak" • "I Recognize" • "Never Let 'Em Hold Ya Back" • "True Confessional" • "Mean Girls" • "Hours of Rats" • "Pain Killer" • "Closer, Closer" • "Constant Disaster" • "Black Corridor" • "Angel" • "Crazy" • "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" • "Janie's Got A Gun" • "Livin' On The Edge" • "Rag Doll"
"Enjoy The Silence" • "We Got the Beat (Previously from Rock Band 2)" • "Torn (Ednaswap song)" • "Open Water" • "Shy (HUNNY song)" • "Bloodhands (Oh My Fever)" • "Who's Your Lover" • "Radio (No Small Children Song)" • "I Remember You (Skid Row song)"" • "Here I Go Again (Previously from Rock Band 3)"" • "