Tag Archives: weezer

#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.

#1420: Weezer – Troublemaker

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2008. What a year. Things that happened in it off the top of my head… The Beijing Olympics. Barack Obama was elected president. The financial crisis. The Dark Knight. I don’t what it says about me that those are the moments that stand out. It’s all a preamble to the fact that Weezer’s third self-titled album, commonly referred to as the Red Album, was released that year too. The record hasn’t gone down as one of the most important in the band’s catalogue. I mainly remember that Weezer era because Rivers Cuomo had a moustache. At the time, I feel like the overriding opinion was that the album was just okay, but anything they did was always going to be better than Make Believe. I followed how the band was doing via the releases of the album’s singles. ‘Pork and Beans’ was the comeback song, was very excited when that was around. And then ‘Troublemaker’ came along, but only digitally, and didn’t have a music video for three months. It was getting to 2009 when I was hearing the song regularly.

‘Troublemaker’ starts off the Red Album, a track of nerdy bravado – probably ironic, but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s completely sincere – that only Rivers Cuomo could somehow pull off. You read the words, they give off a “14-year-old-self-nominated-bad-kid-on-the-block” energy. Very funny coming from Cuomo, who would have been 37 at the time of the song’s recording and had written songs like ‘Island in the Sun’ and ‘Buddy Holly’. Him singing ‘Troublemaker’ shouldn’t work. But it just does. It’s so simple, so catchy. Mainly made up of two chords and a two note melody, it’s very easy for the entire song to get stuck in your heard on the first listen, even if you’re not trying to absorb anything. It was originally going to be the album’s first single. Would have been a reasonable selection. ‘Pork and Beans’ was chosen instead. A solid, solid choice. I think of it now, they did the two-note melody / chord trick in ‘Back to the Shack’, but the chorus alternated between two notes instead. ‘Troublemaker’ does it better. ‘Least I think so.

Don’t really know what else there is to say in regards to the song. Guess I can just provide some thoughts and opinions. Weezer aren’t too bad when it comes to album openers. Up to the Red Album, tracks under that category included classics like ‘My Name is Jonas’, ‘Tired of Sex’, and – a classic in my eyes – ‘American Gigolo’. Say what you want about ‘Beverly Hills’, but I couldn’t see it anywhere else on Make Believe. ‘Troublemaker’ was now part of the gang. Yes, the way Cuomo sings “Marrying a beyootch / Having seven kiooods” is very funny. Bending those words like that so they rhyme with ‘god’ in the next line should be illegal. But it’s Rivers Cuomo. That’s all I have on that. And the “How’s this for arts and crafts? / Wununununnunun” part… I like that quite a bit. Because of the middling reception the Red Album got and the lack of talk it gets today, I’ve never listened to the whole thing from start to finish. I just assume it may be a case where the singles – shout out to ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’ – were the best it had to offer, and everything else was so-so. But any Redheads out there, tell me wrong. I’m always down for a new experience.

#1385: Weezer – Tired of Sex

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In my Hotmail/Outlook account, I have a sent email dated 5th December 2007 titled ‘christmas list’. Weezer’s Pinkerton was one of the things I asked for that year, among other items including The Simpsons Game on the PS2, Colour It In by The Maccabees and the Blink-182 Greatest Hits compilation. There are other requests, but I won’t waste writing space listing them all. Ah, to be 12 again. I have a big memory of discovering ‘El Scorcho’ one day, finding its video online, and it became a favourite song of mine instantly. Was insane how hooked on it I was. I’d had a physical copy of the Blue Album for a year by 2007. I loved it, then. Here was this “new” Weezer song in ‘El Scorcho’. I didn’t know where to download music without paying, didn’t know about Limewire and those things. So I guess I had to get this other Weezer album, just so I could listen to ‘El Scorcho’ whenever I wanted. Gotta thank my cousin for coming in clutch on the list. I did get nearly everything I asked for that year.

‘Tired of Sex’ is the first song on Pinkerton. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t like the track when I heard it the first time. I didn’t like the opening keyboard / guitar riff. I didn’t like the bass line. I didn’t like the vocal melodies. I didn’t like Rivers Cuomo’s screaming. Everything sounded like a bunch of noise. I thought it was a weird subject to be writing a song about. At the age of 12, I couldn’t go around singing it out loud. It definitely wasn’t ‘My Name Is Jonas’. And that’s what I thought of Pinkerton, initially. Nine tracks of noise, only one of them I really liked, ending with a quiet-as-hell acoustic number, and it was nothing like the Blue Album. It wasn’t too long into 2008 that I was singing along to almost every song on Pinkerton. Almost. ‘Tired of Sex’ and ‘Across the Sea’, I could just not get into. There’s no post for ‘Across the Sea’ on here, so I guess in 2013, I still wasn’t into it. But I eventually grew to appreciate it. ‘Tired of Sex’ was the outlier. I think that first impression really left a mark on me. It might have been something like 2018 or ’19, when I heard it again, probably found myself singing it out of the blue at various times, and realized that if I was doing that, then it probably meant I finally liked the song now.

Rivers Cuomo was a desperate man. He just wanted some love. The real kind. He wasn’t getting any satisfaction from the numerous fleeting encounters he was having, which is usually made fun of ’cause he looked like this in the ’90s, but he was the frontman of a pretty big alternative rock band, so it probably wasn’t very difficult for him on that front. The manly men out there would maybe tell him to suck it up. Most likely wouldn’t care. But Cuomo was really feeling it, and ‘Tired of Sex’ lays the desperation flat-out for all to witness. The screaming, all the noise that I said I didn’t like earlier, it wasn’t for show. This was all made with intention. This was catharsis. Patrick Wilson is pummeling those drums. Matt Sharp rolls out that the thick bass line. Cuomo lets everything out, from his vocals to the shredding on the crazy guitar solo. ‘Tired of Sex’ is Pinkerton‘s opening salvo, and it’s probably the most important song on the album ’cause the rest that follow hinge on the issues raised in it. It’s a damn powerhouse.

#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.

#1309: Weezer – Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori

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Weezer had us going for a little moment there in the mid-2010s. After releasing Everything Will Be Alright in the End in 2014, an album that was immediately regarded as a return to form, they then provided their fourth self-titled album – commonly referred to as the White Album – a couple years later. These two records here suggested that the band were on a bit of a roll. Here they were making solid rock music like they did in those halcyon days of the ’90s, something that everyone was praying for when it seemed like all was lost between 2005 and 2010. Then Pacific Daydream arrived in 2017, which felt like a move saying “Don’t get those hopes up too quickly now.” Rivers Cuomo had returned to his mission of writing the perfect pop song. But those two rock albums showed that the band could still do it. They probably could now too. I’m waiting for that day to come.

‘Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori’ is the seventh song on Weezer (2016), one that sees the narrator reminiscing on the two titular characters and wondering, “What they could they both be up to now?” One of those types of songs. It’s boosted by a glorious chorus, another one on an album that’s filled with them, and includes references to Radiohead and Paul Simon. The former of which felt out of place initially, but as time’s gone on I’ve just accepted it for what it is. Luckily Rivers Cuomo provided an interview on the Song Exploder podcast on an episode that was dedicated to the entire song. Really, you could just listen to that, and I wouldn’t have to write anymore. It’s been a while since I listened to that specific episode, but I do remember a mention of Excel spreadsheets when it came to creating the lyrics. Genuinely fascinating stuff. It’s usually better hearing the backstory of a song from its actual songwriter rather than a guy who just listens and provides his own interpretations.

So it looks like this’ll be the only entry from Weezer’s White Album. A shame really, ’cause there’s a number of good songs on there. Opener ‘California Kids’ is one I remember humming spontaneously to myself when I was grocery shopping around the time of the album’s release. ‘L.A. Girlz’, the track ‘Summer Elaine…’ transitions into on the album, was an instantaneous like for me, and I think the band shouldn’t try and make anymore pop songs because they already made their best one with ‘Jacked Up’. It surprised me how much I came to enjoy that one. Had the timing aligned, those three songs would’ve had their own posts too. Not saying the album’s perfect by any means. I was never into ‘Thank God for Girls’ when it was released months in advance, and ‘Do You Wanna Get High?’ I sort of fell out of favour with even after initially being really excited by it and playing repeatedly when it was first unveiled on YouTube. But I still have a lot of love for the whole package and still think it’s the best post-’90s Weezer album to this day.