“I realised it had been a while since we had a powerful young woman up onstage with us.” Watch Pearl Jam cover Taylor Swift's The Best Day with help from a very special guest

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder's annual Ohana Festival often throws up some pleasant surprises, and this year's weekender, held at Doheny State Beach, Dana Point, California on September 27-29 was no exception.

Whereas last year's festival saw Vedder take the opportunity to cover classic songs by The Cure and U2 with his solo band, the closing night of this year's event saw Pearl Jam cover a Taylor Swift song, specifically The Best Day from Swift's 2008 album Fearless.

The cover came as a mash-up with Pearl Jam's cover of Last Kiss, originally recorded by Wayne Cochran in the summer of 1961, performed as the night's first encore.

Vedder prefaced the cover saying, “I realised it had been a while since we had a powerful young woman up onstage with us. And so my pal Harper here is going to help me out.” The Harper in question is Vedder's daughter.

Earlier this year, speaking with MOJO magazine, Vedder shared an anecdote about taking one of his daughters to see a Taylor Swift show, and revealed that the passion and inclusiveness of the star's fandom struck a chord with him, evoking warm memories of his own coming-of-age within the US punk and hardcore community.

Hailing the "galvanising and powerful" positivity with which Swifts fans embraced his daughter in the run-up to the show, Vedder recalls “making friendship bracelets with her and the generosity of these young girls and boys, trading these bracelets with different messages on them – lyrics, song titles, just acts of good will on these little bracelets. They had found their tribe; they were all agreeing on something.

“The craziest thing,” he continues, “was it reminded me of punk rock crowds, of being aligned with all of the misfits in our town, back in the day.”

Watch father and daughter cover TaySway below:

Artists

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.