So I have a vague recollection of where I was when I first heard Weezer’s ‘Undone’. I was in the living room, just sitting on the floor. I’ll say I was about nine years of age, early to mid-2005, those were prime sitting-on-the-floor days. Would have been early in the morning, ’cause that was the only real time that I could have the TV to myself before either my mum or sister woke up and took charge of it for the rest of the day. MTV2 was on as per, and the song’s video was there on the screen. I remember kind of being entranced by it. ‘Cause the song’s a bit slow, but powerful at the same time, and with the slomo action in the camera work, everything came together. Couldn’t take my eyes off the thing. The dogs come running out at the end of the guitar solo, the band appear to give up performing. This was a different kind of video with its simplicity. But it was very effective. The way Patrick Wilson was acting had me thinking he was mentally challenged. Once I became aware of the video’s context – the band had to play the song at a high speed over 25 times – the way everyone was acting made a lot more sense.

And ‘Undone’ might just have been the first song I ever heard by Weezer. ‘Cause I remember seeing ‘Beverly Hills’ and thinking “The drummer seems fine here. I wonder what happened to him.” ‘Undone – The Sweater Song’ was the song that introduced the band to the world, when it was released as the first single from the band’s debut self-titled album, commonly known as “The Blue Album”, in 1994. Kurt Cobain had died. Grunge was kind of on the wane. The followers were lost. And over the hill came four guys whose frontman had the thickest framed pair of glasses and a bowlcut that only a mother could love to give the youth something new. At least, that’s how I saw the band’s arrival with this song summed up in an article somewhere. The song’s meaning can get lost because it sounds like Rivers Cuomo singing about a sweater and not much else. He says ‘Undone’ is meant to be sad. I can see it being from the point of view of a guy telling another person to simply take advantage of them, so much so until he’s nothing but a husk of a man, vulnerable, lying on the floor and scarred from the abuse they’ve taken. It’s a bit much, sure. I think it’s a valid interpretation.

That being said, I would understand why any deeper meaning would be lost on anyone, because the song’s too damn catchy. The riff, good, hypnotic. The verse vocal melody mirroring the riff, good. The opening “I’m me, me be…” verse feels like a statement tailored for Gen X, I don’t know why. The explosion when the crunchy guitars come in for the choruses, now, that’s the good stuff. This song’s such a great guitar song, gotta break out the air guitar when listening to it. And I particularly like how, for the first chorus, Rivers Cuomo and Brian Bell sing the lyrics quite straight. But when the second chorus comes around, they go back and forth with the extra phrases, harmonies and vocalizations, making it even more of a singalong than it already is. Then in the final chorus, there’s the further added lines about tank tops and “Superman skivvies” before both Cuomo and Bell belt out the song’s last word, with the former’s voice cracking to top it off. It’s the big release that then falls into the big ending. But then again, the song doesn’t want to seem to finish ’cause there’s that piano outro that comes out of the guitar feedback on the album. ‘Undone – The Sweater Song’, thinking about it, it’s really a mammoth of a track. A damn classic, I’ll take all of it that’s it got.