This song came up in a “Best Music Videos of all time” thread the other day and it has been haunting me since then.

Content warning for song and especially video: it deals with basically every awful subject in humanity

The only thing that dates the song is the reference to 2010 as being in the future (and the CRT monitors in the clip), but maybe that’s my nostalgia talking. This song and clip made a huge impact on me 25 years ago, and the fact it is so accurate still breaks my heart. We were warned, and here we are still.

The clip is animated by Todd McFarlane who made “Spawn” and the clip for Korn’s “Freak on a Leash”. And partially directed by Kevin Altieri who worked on “Batman: The Animated Series”.

Lyrics (for people who don’t speak Eddie Vedder):

[Intro]
Woo…

[Verse 1]
I’m ahead, I’m a man
I’m the first mammal to wear pants, yeah
I’m at peace with my lust
I can kill cause in God I trust, yeah
It’s evolution, baby

[Verse 2]
I’m at peace, I’m the man
Buying stocks on the day of the crash
On the loose, I’m a truck
All the rolling hills, I’ll flatten 'em out, yeah
It’s herd behavior, uh huh
It’s evolution, baby

[Chorus]
Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, he’s my clone
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
This land is mine, this land is free
I’ll do what I want but irresponsibly
It’s evolution, baby

[Bridge]
I’m a thief, I’m a liar
There’s my church, I sing in the choir:
(Hallelujah, hallelujah)

[Chorus]
Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, admire my clones
'Cause we know, appetite for a nightly feast
Those ignorant Indians got nothin’ on me
Nothin’, why? Because…
It’s evolution, baby

[Verse 3]
I am ahead, I am advanced
I am the first mammal to make plans, yeah
I crawled the earth, but now I’m higher
2010, watch it go to fire
It’s evolution, baby
It’s evolution, baby

[Outro]
Do the evolution
Come on

Video summary (for people who can’t or don’t want to watch)

Throughout the video, a animated seductive woman (similar in appearance to the character Death from the DC comic book series, The Sandman) dances and laughs, representing “Death” as it follows mankind through all of its history. The video begins with the evolution of life, from the smallest cell to the extinction of dinosaurs and reign of Homo sapiens. The video then cuts back and forth throughout human history, depicting man’s primitive, violent nature has essentially unchanged over the centuries. Such depictions include a knight preparing for the coming slaughter during the Crusades, a ritual dance by KKK (the dance is repeated with other groups throughout the video), a rally by Nazi-esque troops (with a symbol reminiscent of the Sig Rune instead of a swastika), concentration camp prisoners, a book burning, carnage upon a World War I-era battlefield, a girl stepping on an anthill as she runs blissfully through a field with the image suddenly changing to that of a landmine going off (as if the mine had been buried under the anthill itself), a death row inmate nervously waiting on an electric chair, the apparent virtual-reality rape of a woman, and the bombing of a Vietnamese village by an American jet, specifically an A-4 Skyhawk, the pilot of which removes his oxygen mask to reveal a skull laughing wildly, and a scene with a crying baby representing Bloody Saturday. Every scene portrayed complements the song’s meaning and tightly follows the lyrics. When Vedder sings “Buying stocks on the day of the crash,” a scene is shown where businessmen are committing suicide by jumping from buildings, a reference to the apocryphal suicides of Black Thursday during the Wall Street Crash of 1929.[14]

Other social and environmental issues such as slavery, whaling, colonialism, Manifest Destiny, uncontrolled urbanization, vivisection, pollution, genetic modification and techno-progressivism are included. The music video blames humankind’s brutality on leadership; with various scenes depicting a judge, a bishop or pope, a Communist dictator and an American president candidate, who is being portrayed as a puppet, controlled by someone unseen, from behind the scene. The video concludes in what seems to be future scenarios of the self-destruction of the human race, including the carpet bombing of a city of clones by futuristic aircraft, computers hijacking the human mind, and finally a nuclear explosion which leaves not only a city in ruins, but the planet damaged beyond recognition. However, near the end of the animation, the earth is briefly seen as an ovum, suggesting a rebirth and the perpetuation of the human condition. During the sequence of flashing images near the end of the video an image of a yield sign being smashed at the corner can be seen, which references the album title and cover art.
- Lifted from the song’s wikipedia video summary