Now What Do You Think About Weezer

A month ago, I was wondering if I'd need to do another "So Know What Do You Think About..." post as I finish up this ten-year Every Album I Own review series. About halfway through my trip through Weezer's 15-album catalogue, it became a new brainer. This is one of my favorite bands,  and they've got an extremely robust discography, so here's the fake Q&A.

But everything Weezer have done since 1996 sucks, right, so who cares?

Even a cursory listen through the thirteen albums Weezer have released since Pinkerton proves that to be false. Sure, Weezer have released a couple of bad albums in that time. Raditude is excrement. However, Weezer's small handful of lousy albums only act as exceptions that prove the rule: Weezer is a very good band, whose restless stylistic experimentation has produced some gems and some duds, as a part of a larger, very agreeable body of work. Case in point, I've got 2019's Black in the middle of my Weezer album's ranking list--meaning it's the epitome of an average Weezer album--and I love it and could easily listen to it front-to-back again right now.

Wait you actually made a Weezer albums ranking list? How did your hands not fall off from typing all those album titles?

Yes. In fact, I'll go ahead and make that a tier list, as well. Here we go.

BAD

15. Raditude (2009)
14. Red (2008)

OKAY
13. Teal (2019)
12. Death to False Metal (2010)
11. Van Weezer (2021) ...(THE VINYL VERSION HAS A GREAT HIDDEN TRACK THAT TAKES THIS INTO "GOOD" TERRITORY, AND PROBABLY PASSES HURLEY AND PACIFIC DAYDREAM!)

GOOD
10. Hurley (2010)
9. Pacific Daydream (2017)
8. Black (2019)

7. Make Believe (2005)

PHENOMENAL
6. Green (2001)

5. White (2016)
4. Everything Will Be Alright In the End (2014)

WORKS OF ARTISTIC PERFECTION
3. OK Human (2021)
2. Blue (1994)
1. Pinkerton (2016)

Hey wait, Hurley is "good?" Doesn't that album have a song about how the frontman's daughter mispronounces "socks" as "sex?"

Hey! Seven out of Hurley's ten songs are really good! Seven out of ten is "good." But look where I put it--Hurley is definitely Weezer's worst "good" album. It's pretty nuts that the band's discography is so vast and solid that they've got nine albums that are better than Hurley, six of which are either close to perfect or perfect.

What do you like so much about Weezer?

Well, those first two albums, especially something about the way the grimy synth and the guitar blends together during the Pinkerton-era, are part of the fabric of my musical makeup. Since then, though, I love how each album or era informs the next. Pinkerton adds more fuzz to Blue, and takes the lyrics in a far more musical direction. People react negatively to that, so the band remove the harsher musical edge and make the lyrics more general. After people realize they actually like Pinkerton the best, and frontman, Rivers Cuomo, decides he's ready, 2005's Make Believe tries to bring back more of the personal to the lyrics, but also starts experimenting more musically--and the band experiments more and more up to 2010's Hurley. Then they take four years off, and decide to see what it would be like to revisit their original sound 20 years later on with Everything Will Be Alright in the End. Then White adds a bit more of a West Coast vibe to that. Pacific Daydream takes that West Coast vibe, but drops the throwback rock music and aims for radio pop. Then Black takes that pop angle and goes as weird as possible, while also taking that West Coast angle to its logical conclusion, finding an alarming sense of alienation. OK Human is a direct response to thatt, taking a musical 180 from Black's cold electronic landscape to a totally analogue, baroque pop one, while lyrically exploring how to beat the feelings of alienation Black discovered. These 15 albums are one long musical and lyrical journey, spearheaded by a musical genius, and I am here for it.

Wow, you really seem to like Weezer!

Yes! I think when I got to the back-to-back greatness of Everything Will Be Alright In the End and White, I realized just how talented Rivers Cuomo and his crew really are. They put out EWBAITE exactly 20 years after Blue and White 20 years after Pinkerton, and I enjoyed both of those newer albums almost as much as the two older ones. That's a stunning achievement...and now I have decided to collect all 15 of Weezer's album on vinyl.

Woah, that's a commitment!

I've already got five of them! Ten to go!

What's next? You're so close to the end of this series! 

Yes! I might actually finish in two months like I planned, right on the ten year anniversary of the series! Just a few more "W"'s to go, and then just the few "X," "Y," and "Z" bands left! So close!

Also, I made a couple Weezer playlists, one which just takes what I think are the best two tracks from each Weezer album in chronological order, and one which I'm calling the "Ultimate Weezer Playlist." The latter is a 30-track playlist I created for maximum emotional effect. I just tried to make the best flowing list I could--there's one album that's represented with five tracks, and several albums from which I didn't include any tracks at all. I'm pretty happy with it. Here it is: