"World Wide Suicide" is the first single from Pearl Jam's eighth studio album, Pearl Jam. It was written by frontman Eddie Vedder. The lyrics depict anger against the war in Iraq, and criticize the US government in a subtle manner. The song features a raw sound closer to the band's earlier material. On the song's intensity, Vedder said, "The times...the times kind of demand a little bit of intensity." Pastorek, Whitney. blank">"Pearl Essence". _Entertainment Weekly. May 4, 2006.

In late February, the band made a 15-second clip of the song available on the Internet, which was then played on numerous North American radio stations. The snippet revealed a hard-rocking sound with a noted return to the dominant vocal styles of Vedder's earlier work. It was first played on US radio on March 3, 2006 on KNDD (Seattle). On March 6, 2006 "World Wide Suicide" was made available via the band's official site to download for free. It was released to general airplay on March 7. Between then and March 12, it was played over 1900 times on modern rock stations in the United States, meaning that it was one of the fastest-growing alternative rock songs of 2006 in the US. The single hit digital music stores on March 14 accompanied by the upbeat B-Side "Unemployable", also on the new album.

It entered the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart at number 3, making it one of the highest debuts of the last several years and becoming the band's first number 1 on that chart since "Who You Are" in 1996. "World Wide Suicide" was also the band's first number 1 single of any sort in 8 years (since "Given to Fly" hit number 1 in 1998). The song spent a total of three weeks at number 1 on the Modern Rock chart. Without selling any hard copies of the single or distributing CDs to radio programmers, consultants and industry contacts, "World Wide Suicide" became the first digitally delivered number 1 song in Canadian radio history. On the song's radio success, Vedder stated, "I don't think two or three years ago you could even get a song called "World Wide Suicide" with the word soldier in it played on the radio. The fact that it's getting played a lot, maybe that means that the ocean that is freedom of speech is still healthy enough for a fish to survive in."

On April 15, 2006, "World Wide Suicide" was premiered live on Saturday Night Live. This marked Pearl Jam's first appearance on SNL since 1994. On April 19, 2006, "World Wide Suicide" was played during an episode of CSI: NY entitled "Run Silent, Run Deep". "World Wide Suicide" was also transcribed in the October 2006 issue of Guitar World. The song was named #11 in Rolling Stone's "The 100 Best Songs of the Year" for 2006 and was also named #54 in the New York Post's "206 best songs to download of 2006."

Live performances of "World Wide Suicide" can be found on the Live at the Gorge 05/06 box set. A performance of the song mixed from various dates in Italy is also included on the DVD Immagine In Cornice.