Songfacts®:

• Written by lead singer Eddie Vedder, "World Wide Suicide" tells the story of a family who finds out their son, a soldier, has been killed in battle when they read about it in the morning paper.
  
  The song is a commentary on the futility of war, where killing is assured. Pearl Jam were very outspoken against the Iraq War and American foreign policy in general. They took part in many efforts to get President George W. Bush voted out of office, but Bush was re-elected. It was following that election that Vedder wrote the song.
• "World Wide Suicide" was released as the first single from Pearl Jam's eighth album, which on the cover has just a photo of an avocado along with the band name. The song went to #1 on the Modern Rock chart.
• The song had an unusual release. A 15-second snippet was sent to US radio stations as a teaser on February 24, 2006. The Seattle station KNDD somehow got a copy of the full song and played it about 30 times before it was embargoed.
  
  Pearl Jam then released the song as a free digital download on their website four days before it was available in other formats. They also included a bootleg from one of their 1993 concerts with the download.
• Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard had this to say about the song in Pearl Jam's compilation Twenty: "The melody is really strong. It sounds like AC/DC... It doesn't sound slick or that we polished it for too long. That's the main thing, really, politics aside. The song just has some energy in it. It has the intangibles."
• Pearl Jam started making concept videos again when they released the album, starting with one for "Life Wasted."
  
  The acclaimed photographer Danny Clinch directed the "World Wide Suicide" video, somehow convincing Eddie Vedder to lip-synch. Pearl Jam hadn't released a concept video since "Do The Evolution" in 1998, and that one was animated!
• The band performed the song on Saturday Night Live along with "Severed Hand" when they were the musical guests on the April 15, 2006 episode.