Thread: Weezer - GAH Week 17 - 3.3.23

Weezer fans, the floor is yours.

I am only familiar with blue album and the hits. There's 12 million plays a month on Spotify, fwiw. More than almost all of these legacy album-era bands. That's not nothing is how I look at it. But it's also a fleeting relevance indicator that can be influenced by tours and such.

Having said that, blue album is one of those A+ albums like Dirt and Master of Puppets and Pet Sounds.

I can't explain why, well I can, but no one wants to hear it.

For those still reading, the reason is that my best friend in college introduced me to them. And I tended to have "my" music and he had "his" music. I liked "weird" stuff, he was into Pumpkins, Femmes, Aerosmith, Petty, Oasis, Deep Blue Something, etc. We agreed on everything NIN had put out by '95 and Dookie though...it was sort of a weird thing where I still had feelings of possession about my oh-so-special music.

SO>>>

Weezer peeps. Gimme a thirty song playlist that doesn't have any blue album, Bev Hills, Hash Pipe, or Island in the Sun.

And your two favorite non-blue albums.

Obligatory music critic song ranking

https://uproxx.com/indie/weezer-best-songs-ranked-list/

For the purpose of ranking Weezer songs, I have re-immersed myself in one of the zaniest catalogs in rock history. Songs Of Love And Hate might be the name of a Leonard Cohen album, but it also describes my experience with the Rivers Cuomo songbook. There are few albums I love more than 1994’s Weezer, also known as “The Blue Album.” And there are few albums I have reviewed more poorly than 2008’s Weezer, also known as “The Red Album.” There is not a band I ostensibly enjoy that I have also artistically canceled more times than Weezer. I love many Weezer tunes, but I probably hate more of them.

I’ll start with a “Tired Of Sex”-style confession: I don’t really care about the rankings. I don’t really know what the difference is between a particular band’s 27th best song and their 31st best. And I believe that anyone who does claim to know that definitively is either incredibly smart, highly eccentric, or a robot. (Or, if you’re all three, Rivers Cuomo.) In my mind, the list format is a vehicle for packaging thousands of words of critical analysis that might otherwise seem unpalatable if presented in large gray blocks. On the internet, a winning formula is taking a dumb idea and executing it smartly. That’s what a list is. Most people do not want to read 7,000 words on a band from the 1990s. But they will suddenly change their minds if you put numbers next to every other paragraph in descending order. It’s a magic trick. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I know it works.

It might be unwise to admit this. In five years, I could feel so embarrassed by this disclosure that I’ll feel compelled to put out an album composed of extremely simple songs in which every guitar solo merely repeats the vocal melody. But I also know that the people most bothered by “not writing about the song you’re supposed to be writing about” don’t read the blurbs anyway. CTRL-Fing a list column and then complaining about the songs that “got no love” is as popular as “The Blue Album.” Reading the blurbs is for a more selective Pinkerton-sized niche. If you made it this far, I know who you are because I am that person, too.

Let’s skip ahead to the “Across The Sea”-esque revelation: I don’t always write about the “best” songs. Because the point is to cover the entirety of an artist or band’s career, I will sometimes include less than “best” songs as an excuse to poke into less celebrated corners of the catalog. Usually, this is relatively easy to justify, because the less than “best” songs are still pretty great. But with Weezer … I feared that this would be impossible. I actually joked with my editor about doing a worst Weezer songs list. Only I was about 35 percent serious.

“We don’t do that,” he replied.

So here we are. I did not want this list to be 95 percent mid-’90s favorites, deep cuts and B-sides, with the remaining five percent covering the next 25 years. But I also did not want to be put in a position in which I was forced to argue that “I’m Your Daddy” [extremely music critic voice] represents the stunning apotheosis of Cuomo’s troubled middle-aged period, in which his impulse to romanticize childhood was in conflict with the animalistic desires of an introvert not yet in control of his sexual demons. I might make a living dispensing opinions on songs, an odd vocation to be sure, but I still have at least a shred of dignity.

Pinkerton is a great album, on par with Blue.

I am not well-versed in all things Weezer, but these are a few my fav non-Blue songs

I would like to hear from Timmy! and Shake. Pinkerton seems pretty solid my first few listens. Any other solid albums?

Pinkerton is actually very good, not just solid. Early impression is that RC and company are closer to a Beatles in pop songwriting acumen. Like if RHCP is a Zep, Weezer is a Beatles. There is something superlative in being able to craft a tight new pop song. If RHCP is funk rock or alt rock or w/e, and Green Day is punk pop...Weezer is pop rock. The most accessible. Very good tight short songs.

It's a worthwhile detour for that reason alone. How important is pop songwriting?

I would say there are more Beach Boys parallels

Originally Posted by aberdien

I would say there are more Beach Boys parallels

Yeah, I was gonna add that, but there's this sort of US vs. UK thing in my mind. There's a sort of Brian Wilson vibe in there. Fr. And not just the surfer vibe. RC seems like maybe he's wired that way a little bit. The studio tyrant who insists on perfection. And vocal harmony is a major part of their art. Not sure if they are double tracked RC vocals or not.

I made the Beatles comp because of songcraft--an area the Beatles (and obvs Beach Boys) excelled. I'm not blown away by amazing musicians and so forth. Rivers is a great singer though, a very very capable pop singer. They just make these tight, catchy songs. That's not easy. Try it lol.

this is fun