Friday, December 18, 2015
Even Green‘s most personal song – written about the same flame who inspired other top-shelf songs of the era, “O Girl” and “Do You Wanna Get High?” – is a product of the album’s commercial calculus and strophic simplicity. In discussing the penultimate song on the record, “Glorious Day,” I praised this formulaic monomania for the trance-like state it […]
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Last time, with “Photograph,” I mentioned the hypnotic properties of The Green Album formula. I’ve been floating in that ooze a lot lately. Living in a busybody city like Seoul, I sometimes want to disengage from my aural environment, be it the talkshow drone of cab radio or the auditory hell of your average ramen bar. Green is the perfect fix: even […]
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Following the failure of Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo spent half a decade smothering one of the brightest pop songwriting muses of our time. After some early indicators, the first real product of this process was 2001’s Green Album, a 28-minute-thin slice of early Beatles songcraft sieved through the compression filter of safe, formulaic late ’90s radio rock. “Photograph” is the […]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Although The Green Album is almost universally considered Weezer’s strongest offering of the past decade — some fans even ascribe it the “classic” status usually reserved for the band’s first two albums — there remains a consensus that the record is a bit of a missed opportunity. In 2002, not even a year removed from […]
Monday, November 23, 2009
Although “Simple Pages” is far from the ranks of Weezer’s universally detested, I have never understood the hatred some have for this particular little ditty from the second side of The Green Album. Admittedly, it’s placement towards the latter end of a numbingly formulaic song set might mark the exact moment that people begin to […]
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
“I went through a massive Oasis phase in 97-99. I bet Liam [Gallagher] rubbed off on me. He’s a very non-dynamic singer. Perhaps his influence wasn’t a good thing.” —Rivers, ‘asschun correspondence,’ 2002 (http://www.members.shaw.ca/ridd2/correspondence/asschun.html) Perhaps the best example of Oasis’ detrimental effect on our dear Rivers Cuomo is the original demo of “Island In The […]
Monday, November 24, 2008
“Crab” is arguably the worst song on 2001’s The Green Album. As such, for a time many fans considered it the worst song Weezer had ever released. This impression outlasted its tenability (which expired by the next year’s Maladroit), though for most, Green‘s value has appreciated to a point where even its slightest cut is a fan favorite. Whatever Green lacks in […]
…And in the opposite corner, we have The Green Album. Whereas a gloriously on-edge, unhinged performance like “Getchoo” highlights exactly why Pinkerton is so satisfying even a dozen years on, by 2001 Rivers Cuomo had changed directions. In his mind, that approach now represented the sophomore slump, his biggest commercial failure; while many would be […]
“Island in the Sun” is the most released song of Weezer’s career. Too released. More released than any one song ever should be. To wit: THE (MAYBE IN)COMPLETE “ISLAND IN THE SUN” DISCOGRAPHY The Green Album (2001) Radio-only promo CD (2001) UK retail CD single #1 (2001; with “Island in the Sun” music video CD-ROM) […]
Even to the most fervent Weezer diehards, “Hash Pipe” must have come as a big surprise. Hitting airwaves in April of 2001 as the first single from The Green Album, which dropped the following month, it was the first officially released Weezer song in five years — and it was a clear departure. To hear that […]