Tag Archives: weezer (the blue album)

#1445: Weezer – Undone – The Sweater Song

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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.

#1319: Weezer – Surf Wax America

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I’m doing this thing lately where I’m dating my posts. Don’t worry, from the next one on, you’ll be able to carry on reading without realizing I’m writing these two months in advance of their scheduled dates. But it’s important to note, for this particular track too, that this is written the day after the man, the legend, the genius, Brian Wilson – the brains behind the Beach Boys – passed away at the age of 82. I let out an unrestrained “What?!” when I saw the message panning at the bottom of the TV screen on Sky News. Luckily, it was just me in the house, so I felt free in doing so. I mean, what more can you say? So much great music written by this one man. He’ll live on forever through it. And the influence… I feel like the whole “songs about California” thing we see today was started by Wilson and the Beach Boys. And there would be so many tracks from the past 30 years that would have gone in a totally different direction had it not been for his work.

And that leads me in to the subject of today’s post. Weezer’s ‘Surf Wax America’, the sixth track on the band’s 1994 self-titled debut, better known by you and me as the Blue Album. When I got that album in 2006 and liked it instantaneously that I started reading up around it online, one of the things that was always made clear was how the vocal breakdown in ‘Surf Wax…’ was inspired by the Beach Boys. And in ‘Holiday’ too. “Guess it’s some old band,” 11-year old me probably thought. Wouldn’t be years until I listened to the Beach Boys. All I knew was I had this great album where every song was a straight-up 10 outta 10. The guitars were crunchin’, the melodies and vocal harmonies were memorable, the performances powerful. A very solid alternative rock album if ever there was one. All the better experienced with a good speaker system, like I had with my first listen, thanks to a setup my uncle did to go with the old Windows XP computer.

The track begins the second half of the album, coming as a big pick-me-up after previous track ‘Undone’ ends with an interlude of strange piano swoops and tinkling keys. Drummer Pat Wilson came up with the riff that begins the song, hence his songwriting credit, and on top Rivers Cuomo sings about all the conventional people driving their cars to their office jobs while he prefers to surf. The song’s a great one, all about wanting to be free and breaking away from the rat race of society. Though Cuomo has also said that the whole thing’s meant to be totally sarcastic and not meant to be taken seriously. He doesn’t even surf. What’s up with that? Well, he could have fooled me. The way the whole track’s delivered, the gusto in Cuomo’s vocal, the copious amounts of energy provided in all the instruments… Sounds to me like this couldn’t be done by a band who wasn’t being anything but sincere in the music. All I know is I have a great time listening to it. I don’t know if people have it as a favourite on the album when it’s next to others like ‘Buddy Holly’, ‘Say It Ain’t So’ or ‘Jonas’. But it’s all right with me.

#1157: Weezer – Say It Ain’t So

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According to my post for ‘Buddy Holly’ years and years back, I properly started getting into Weezer when I was about 10 years old. 29-year-old me can’t remember so well, so I’ll take 18-year-old me’s word. But it does sound about right. 2005 (the year I was 10) was around the time Make Believe was out, and although that’s considered to be one of the band’s worst albums, I think my interest in them stemmed from seeing this video for ‘We Are All on Drugs’ on MTV2 on the regular and other Weezer songs I’d catch on the TV by chance. ‘Buddy Holly’ became a favourite song of young self very quickly, and I think it was through trying to find its music video online that I then came across ‘Say It Ain’t So’, whose video was a lot less gimmicky in comparison but, to me, still impactful nonetheless.

It’s all coming back to me now, actually. I remember spending a lot of time repeating the video at certain points during the song. Not on YouTube (which was busy not being active), but some other vague music video site that probably doesn’t exist now. The “bubbli-hi-hi-hi-hiiing” was unexpected. As was the delivery in the “wrestle with Jiiiimmy”. The string bends in between the power chords during the second chorus. There were all these little quirks and changes within the song that were drawing my attention. And it was through watching the videos for this, ‘Buddy Holly’ and ‘Undone’, not necessarily in that order, that I thought that I had to get The Blue Album in my possession. All the singles were good, so it was a no brainer. Still I have my copy to this day since 2006.

‘Say It Ain’t So’ is rightly one of Weezer’s most popular songs. Probably one of the best alternative rock songs of the ’90s, to be fair. It’s weird though nowadays, ’cause Weezer’s a band that lot of people like to joke about or make memes out of, so you never know if people are really listening for the music or whether they want to be in on the joke. But there’s no joking about this song. It’s all straight from the heart. The track sees Cuomo battling a personal demon he faced when he was 16, when he saw a can of beer in the fridge and, from that, assumed his stepfather would be leaving the family because his biological father started drinking when he left his mother. Cuomo said he probably shouldn’t have written the song about trauma like that. But he did. And it’s very, very good.

#989: Weezer – Only in Dreams

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2006 was the year that I listened through Weezer’s Blue Album for the first time. I was 11 years old and had somehow stumbled upon ‘Buddy Holly’, ‘Undone’ and ‘Say It Ain’t So’ through the TV and music video sites that weren’t YouTube. I liked all three. It only made sense to own the album they were on, so I could listen to them whenever I wanted. Every track on there was instantly memorable. The guitars, good. The harmonies, good. The choruses, very nice. And coming through the decked-out speakers my uncle installed for the XP computer, it certainly made for an experience. But at that age, I still didn’t have quite the attention span. My eye had caught the just-about eight minute length of the final track ‘Only in Dreams’ on Windows Media Player. Not to say that everything I had heard depended on how it ended, but a kid doesn’t usually have the patience to sit through that long a song. The wall of feedback at the end of ‘Holiday’ left a brief period of silence, and then the bass guitar riff of ‘…Dreams’ started. And I was pretty much entranced from that point onward. Very hypnotic way to start, which makes those guitar entrances for the choruses really special.

The track is one in which Rivers Cuomo, or at the least the nameless narrator here, is detailing this alluring, mystical lady who he just can’t get his mind off. She seems to be the perfect woman. He’s written the lyric with a second-person narrative, as if addressing the listener. You know, “you can’t resist her, she’s in your bones”. But taking into account the observational takes of women that would be a constant through the band’s discography, I think it’s fair to say it’s all coming from a very personal experience. Cuomo details a fairytale of a man and woman holding hands and floating into the ether, only to wake up, realise that it’s all been a dream and be left disappointed by a lonely reality. Hey, it’s relatable stuff. Could say it may suffer from little sappy. But goodness, the crunch of those guitars that come in during the choruses add so much emotional weight that anything else that happens during this song is justified.

I think we can all agree that the highlight of the entire track is the breakdown that happens about five minutes in. By that point, the singing has finished – you won’t hear Cuomo’s voice again. And starting with the bass guitar again, the track solo rises in intensity with Patrick Wilson smacking on the drums and cymbals and dueling guitar lines, courtesy of Cuomo. This section seems to go on and on, there’s a huge build in tension. You wonder where it’s gonna go. And the release happens when all the guitars fall in, playing the bass guitar riff in unison. It’s a glorious moment, capped off with a spectacular solo, coming to an end in the comedown with Matt Sharp’s bass – just like the track started. That’s how the whole album ends. And that’s how Weezer introduced themselves to the world. Talk about a way to start things off.

#928: Weezer – No One Else

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Not sure if there’s a catchier power pop tune about a possessive and controlling boyfriend than Weezer’s ‘No One Else’, the second track on the band’s Blue Album from 1994. Seeing that title for the first time, your mind go to something like, “Oh, it’s one of those songs where the narrator doesn’t want to be with anyone else than the person they’re currently with.” But then you hear it and realise that a completely different angle is taken. Instead, the narrator doesn’t want his girl to have a life, go outside, or laugh at anyone else’s jokes. And if anyone sees her out in the town, the relationship’s as good as over. Some could say that a track like is a little problematic. I think Weezer fans realise this too. If only the musicality on display was bad, then I would be inclined to like it a lot less. As it stands now, I still see it as a favorite of mine.

Compared to the swaying feel of preceding track ‘My Name Is Jonas’, ‘No One Else’ ploughs on with your standard 4/4 rhythm, falling right into its first verse with a descending guitar riff. Those crunchy-toned guitars take up the soundscape. Rivers Cuomo sings the first verse, bassist Matt Sharp joins in on the chorus with that somewhat iconic falsetto, Brian Bell harmonises on the chorus’s final line and with the return of the opening riff we’re back to the second verse. This has all happened in just under a minute. The track goes under a ‘intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus’ structure, but it subtly adds these layers and changes as the track progresses. Cuomo, Sharp and Bell are all singing together during the second chorus instead of coming in one-by-one. There’s a tension-setting one-chord-playing guitar that comes in during the second verse. Cuomo never sings the chorus the exact same way each time it comes around. Just these little things that keep you engaged while the track goes on.

The track’s side-eye inducing take on relationships makes it something of a precursor to what Cuomo would make a full nose-dive into when it came to writing and recording Pinkerton. But while I think you can somewhat sympathise what Cuomo was going through with some of the lyricism on that record, at least after having read up on the context of what was going on during the making of that album, the narrator on ‘No One Else’ is a straight-up unlikable person. Everything’s just so easy to sing along to though, and it’s full of cathartic moments of tension and release. It’s a sleek three minute package.