Weezer’s career is one that lends itself to unexpected twists and turns: buttoned-down, multi-platinum power pop band of ’94 goes for raw, rock’n’roll catharsis in ’96; result tanks in every way imaginable, band goes off the radar for four straight years, widely presumed dead; ’96 album meanwhile winds up amassing one of the most fervent […]
Some may complain ad nauseum about Raditude‘s unprecedentedly pop-minded leanings, but Maladroit outtake “How Long” is proof that the idea of Top 40 pop/rock has produced far worse things in the mind of Rivers Cuomo. I have six versions of this song in my iTunes, dated between 12/19/01 and 1/09/02, and while there’s some variation […]
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
When “I Was Scared” first leaked with the rest of Rivers Cuomo’s Alone II home demo volume in 2008, there was a fair amount of speculation revolving around how this song — an apology set to lyrics — might have been written for Mikey Welsh. Welsh was a bassist who, to paraphrase a 2005 Alternative Press […]
Folksy, simple, and all around a very nice little ditty written and sung by Weezer guitarist Brian Bell. Although this song was released as a bonus track for The Red Album (the official coming-out party of Bell, bassist Scott Shriner, and drummer Pat Wilson as lead vocalists on a Weezer record), the performance here is […]
After 21 northeastern winters in a row, I’ve grown pretty damn sick of the season. The cold always seems to pierce through my woolen layers and straight to the bone; the already sickly social scene at my college seems to fall headlong into a frost-bitten coma; and if there’s any magic to be found in […]
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 […]
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
I do have moments I love on Maladroit, like ‘Falling For You.’ —Brian Bell, Alternative Press cover story, 2005 Of course, as the interviewer quickly points out in his article, “Falling For You” has nothing to do with Maladroit, and is rather a key moment in the band’s much-lauded Pinkerton album. A telling Freudian slip, […]
Without question, “Oh Lisa” is the worst product of the Green Album era. As one of two tracks on the flipside to the “Island In The Sun” single (paired with the relatively benign “Always”), it is in some ways difficult to distinguish from its many contemporaries — the opening lyrical couplet is a rehash of […]
“Undone — The Sweater Song” was the first Weezer song to capture the imagination of the alt-rock nation (and in 1994, it really did have enough of a set perimeter and population to be called a “nation”), but “Buddy Holly” was the first to make the band pop superstars. And though the infallible melody and […]
Monday, September 28, 2009
A 120-second hemorrhage of sub-Green Day derivative-derivative pop punk puke, this putrid piece of shit may not be the worst Weezer song ever released, but it’s certainly the least listenable. Beyond that I won’t even bother to acknowledge this song with sonic description, and the lyrics are total nonsense too, as evidenced by its original […]