WTF Happened Weezer

You may not know this, but music is important in my life. Really, I'm a big fan of music.

In particular, I'm a big fan of Weezer.

Hearing the blue album for the first time was a pretty revelatory thing for me. I was in middle school, and discovering a lot of new music on my own. This was during the dot com explosion, but my family was rocking a 14.4 modem, so the internet was basically molasses. A lot of my music came from the radio, coupled with time spent in used CD stores. I had heard Buddy Holly many times over, and always enjoyed it when I heard, but didn't know who it was. I was browsing a local CD Warehouse when I saw an album with a blue cover prominently featuring four goofy-looking dudes and the word "Weezer." Finding the band name funny, I checked the back and realized this was "that Buddy Holly band." I had some allowance saved up, so I figured... why not?

Honestly, it didn't seem like a big purchase at the time; I had no idea what to expect, so I didn't make much of it. My sister wouldn't let me change the music in her car, and that was fine.

A year or two prior, I had received a nice CD player. Three CD changer, two medium-size speakers, remote control, a variety of different pre-set equalizations along with a customization option, the works. Suffice it to say I was impressed with the quality of the product, though it may be paltry by today's standards. Anyway, I got home and innocently popped that blue CD into my CD player, completely unaware that my life was about to change, truly.

Finding the correct words to describe my feelings while listening to that album is difficult. From the celebratory surf-rock of Surf Wax America to the brooding emotionalism of Say It Ain't So to the epic build and release of Only in Dreams, Weezer's blue album perfectly encapsulated my feelings as a child on the brink of defining himself in his own terms. Perhaps you think I'm being high-falutin, and perhaps you're right, but regardless you can hardly overstate the sheer awesomeness of the blue album. Every song is catchy, every song is accessible, the whole album is just fluid and perfect.

Then I went to high school. Middle school is a hard time for most everyone, and the transition to high school is not necessarily any easier. Granted, I had a good high school experience overall, but I spent most of my freshman year trying to determine who I was. (This was predominantly subconscious, but clearly the kid walking around in blue and white striped knee socks or white pants with rainbow pinstripes has manifested this process externally.) During my freshman year I found out that Weezer had some 4 years previous released a follow-up to the blue album, Pinkerton. I bought the album by the end of the week.

Pinkerton held its own revelations for me, but not quite on the scale of the blue album. Pinkerton was different. It was strange. It was funny. It was abrasive and sexually frustrated. The solos were spazzy, the guitar lines angular. The whole album had a raw emotional feel, but it was touching and intensely personal. A great record for teenage boys, truly (and girls, too, but I always like to identify with lead singers). This album didn't leave my CD player for a solid 4 months, without exaggeration. I listened to it almost daily; even now it frustrates me how short the album is.

Weezer had pulled me in completely. They were my default favorite band for years following.

But some things had happened between Pinkerton's release and my purchase of the album. Matt Sharp, the bassist, left the band. Sales for Pinkerton were lackluster. Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer and primary songwriter, retreated to Harvard for a while. These were things I did not know.

Weezer's next album, the green album, was due out in May of 2001. Pinkerton had only been in my possession for a few months when I found out about the new album. I bought the green album the day it was released; I still remember walking the half-mile or so to the CD Warehouse near my high school.

Unabashed, super-polished pop rock. To me, that sums up the green album. Suffice it to say I was taken aback by Weezer's apparent face lift. Their personality as a band had changed. My theory has always been that Rivers took the poor sales of Pinkerton quite personally given the.... personal nature of that album. So he wrote songs that were less personal, more vague, and somehow less meaningful. Don't get me wrong, I still like the green album, but it obviously lacks the same quirkiness and charm of their first two records. And sure, I defended the album and the band vociferously, a trend that continued for the next couple of records in fact (perhaps against my better judgment), but the green album definitely left me feeling short-changed. It was a short album, but that wasn't the real problem. I just didn't understand how a band I loved so much could release such a seemingly flat album. My feelings on the album were mixed, at times hearing it as vapid, at other times lively but prosaic. Where was the dynamism? Where was the emotion? Where were the theatrics? (Pinkerton was based on Madame Butterfly, after all.)

Again, I like the green album. And in fact, my opinion on the album has changed dramatically over time, and especially in comparison to their more recent releases.

Next was Maladroit, which I liked a lot then and still like now. I think perhaps I knew that Weezer would never be what they once were, and I accepted it. Of course, they had also shifted stylistically again. This time they traded polish for distortion. Maladroit was more distorted, but also stilted and oblique, at least musically. Solos were everywhere. Huge bass lines. Crunchy guitars. (Well, except for Death and Destruction, a much lighter number in roughly the middle of the album.) They were reverting back to the abrasive sound of Pinkerton, but of course didn't get there, and they never would have.

Then I went to college, and then came Make Believe. But I'm not going to go into detail here. Or for the subsequent albums: red album (their third self-titled album a la blue and green album), Raditude, and the most recent, Hurley.

It's hard to say exactly what occurred between Maladroit and Make Believe, but it wasn't very good. Ultimately, Make Believe was forgettable. Actually, everything after Maladroit is forgettable to me. What happened? Did I grow up? Likely. Did Weezer not grow up? Also likely. But who changed more, me or them? Granted, Make Believe and its successors had a few good tracks, but also some really horrible ones. We Are All on Drugs. Really? If the title is any indication, and it is, this will be no good. The quality of songwriting has been, to me, relatively dreadful except in a handful of places. The music has been good albeit unremarkable.



Of course, I own all their albums. And I've listened to even their more recent albums many times over -- save for Hurley, which I've only listened to a couple times. I wouldn't listen to them if I didn't feel something for them. But am I just fooling myself? Can't I just let go and have fun and enjoy the music for what it is? I like to think I can. Or am I just cynical and jaded?

Measuring their impact on my life would be difficult. Those first two albums, in particular, represent and sum up a lot of my high school experience and, ultimately, myself. And while I know I'm a sucker for nostalgia, Weezer is quite clearly a different beast these days. So what the hell happened? Who changed more, Weezer, you or me?

Update: Weezer recently announced some tour dates for their "Blinkerton" tour.