"Nothing as It Seems" is a song by the American rock band Pearl Jam. Written by bassist Jeff Ament, "Nothing as It Seems" was released on April 25, 2000 as the first single from the band's sixth studio album, Binaural (2000). The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The song also appears on Pearl Jam's 2004 greatest hits album, rearviewmirror (Greatest Hits 1991–2003).

"Nothing as It Seems" was written by bassist Jeff Ament. Ament plays upright bass on the song giving it a very atmospheric feel. Guitarist Mike McCready used a Fender Pedal for the song which provided the song with its distorted sounds, which McCready described as sounding "like a plane going down." The song was recorded using binaural recording techniques, and was produced by Tchad Blake. Ament on the song:

It was just a little ditty on a demo that I kind of played some hand drums on, and had this little song. Actually, I spent quite a bit of time with the lyrics, and I think Stone initially said, 'Let's try that one.' There were little sections of the song [where] I definitely heard Mike doing his thing, so I kinda said, 'Hey, man, you need to write a theme for these little sections.' It's pretty cool to see a little song that I wrote being played by everyone. I mean, I can almost kind of stand back and just watch this great band play a song...and take it to a completely different level. Mike and Ed [Vedder], they have that ability where they can really raise the level of anything that they play.

Jeff Ament's original demo of "Nothing as It Seems" is a track on disc 2 of Pearl Jam's soundtrack to their documentary "Pearl Jam Twenty" directed by Cameron Crowe.

Ament revealed that he wrote "Nothing as It Seems" about his childhood growing up in a rural area of Northern Montana. In one interview, he called it "a dark, heavy tale" and stated, "For me, it's a song about judgment and not always understanding what is going on with another person." In another interview, he elaborated further:

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