Songfacts®:

• "Waiting for Stevie" came about in the most delightfully haphazard way, as these things often do. Eddie Vedder and producer Andrew Watt were sitting around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for Stevie Wonder to swing by and lay down a harmonica track for Vedder's solo album, Earthling. Vedder recounted the experience to Apple Music's Zane Lowe:
  
  "Andrew had worked with Stevie because Stevie was working with Elton [John], and Andrew was working with Elton," Vedder explained. "So Stevie was in that basement, tinkering away on this old piano - Andrew's Mrs. Mills. They had this open line of communication, and Stevie was supposed to come down. Now, the whole time before he shows up, you think, 'This isn't really going to happen, is it? How could it? Is this real life?' But sure enough, he showed up and was just incredible. We recorded late into the night. One of the great things is, Stevie doesn't really have a circadian rhythm, so it's just his time. It was a powerful, powerful thing."
  
  But the magic didn't stop there. While waiting for Stevie - somewhere between 8:00 and 11:00 PM - Watt started noodling around on the piano. "Did I show you that?" Vedder asked him. Watt shook his head. "Well, here's one," Vedder said, and he proceeded a similar melody from 1996's No Code. They overlaid the tunes, and voila, the song was born. When the rest of the band joined in, it achieved lift off.
• Despite being sparked by Stevie Wonder's late arrival, the Stevie character in the song title isn't Wonder at all. Vedder revealed to Mojo magazine that she's actually "a young girl not feeling appreciated by her peers, who finds relief and connection in music at a show." This, Vedder noted, mirrored his own teenage epiphany when he first heard The Who's 1973 mod opera Quadrophenia. "I felt more understood by that record than by teachers, family, or peers," he mused.
• "Waiting for Stevie" is a throwback to Pearl Jam's classic arena-rock sound of the 1990s.
  
  "I think Andrew had more to do with that song than any song on the record because in a sense, it's almost a tribute to Soundgarden," guitarist Stone Gossard told Spin. "It has a riff that gives Matt Cameron the opportunity to be as great as we know him to be. I think that drum fill coming out of the bridge is probably one of the greatest drum fills of all time. There's just no way you can't make the Mötley Crüe sign. I love that song. It's the way the bass line and the guitar line play against each other melodically. To me, it feels kind of like a hit, you know what I mean? I'll be curious where it ends up sitting in the pantheon of favorites among Pearl Jam fans."