‘Future Days’: Pearl Jam’s Glorious Heartfelt Ballad
A highlight from 2015’s ‘Lightning Bolt,’ the song plays an integral role in HBO’s ‘The Last Of Us.’
One of Pearl Jam’s most beautifully-realized ballads, “Future Days” has had an incredible afterlife. The song initially proved its worth as the introspective denouement to the Seattle rockers’ Billboard 200-topping tenth album Lightning Bolt in 2013, but more recently its classic status has been underlined by its prominent role in the second season of HBO’s award-winning post-apocalyptic drama series The Last Of Us.
With hindsight, “Future Days” set itself apart right from the start. The song was inspired by the loss of Eddie Vedder’s friend and fellow musician Dennis Flemion, a founding member of Milwaukee alt-rock act the Frogs. Flemion’s accidental death by drowning in July 2012 hit Vedder hard and he laid his feelings bare in “Future Days”: a reflective acoustic ballad which opens with the poignant line “If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself.”
Prior to its official release on Lightning Bolt, Pearl Jam debuted “Future Days” live at a show at Chicago’s Wrigley Field in July 2013 and the audience response immediately suggested the song had something special.
“I think it’ll be one of those [songs] that people cry to, hopefully get a little closer to their loved ones when they hear it,” guitarist Mike McCready told Billboard when Lightning Bolt was released. “I was feeling that on that night [at Wrigley Field]. I was feeling it with the whole crowd.”
Also feeling the emotional pull of “Future Days” was Neil Druckmann, the writer/director of The Last Of Us video game franchise. Druckmann was so impressed by the song that in the 2020 video game The Last Of Us Part II, the character Joel performs an acoustic guitar cover of “Future Days” for Ellie. Shortly after this, Eddie Vedder performed a solo rendition of the song at the 2020 Game Awards – an event at which The Last Of Us Part II won a whopping eight awards.
Pearl Jam’s music has been inextricably linked with The Last Of Us ever since. “Left Behind” (from 2002’s Riot Act) featured in the seventh episode of The Last Of Us’ first season on HBO in 2023, while the show’s second series premiered on April 13, 2025, with an episode titled “Future Days.”
Reprising the plotline from the original video game, this episode featured Joel (played on screen by Pedro Pascal) teaching Ellie (Bella Ramsey) how to play “Future Days” on an acoustic guitar. However, when Ellie attempts to play the song after Joel’s death in a later episode, she is unable to do so. It reminds her too much of Joel. Though gentle and evocative, the song is steeped in loss – and ultimately that’s the most difficult of all human emotions to process.
“I really appreciate the way [“Future Days”] was used in The Last Of Us: Part II, especially bringing Joel and Ellie together, connecting through music,” Eddie Vedder said in an interview with Consequence. “I thought it was cool too that it made you perhaps want to pick up a guitar yourself and write a song for your loved one.”
