Pink/Blue: Part Five
Weezer Fandom (or not?): September 2010-August 2023.
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Speak to most any hardcore Weezer fan—and I mean the early fans, when it counts!!!—and we can probably tell you which album led us astray from the band, when we felt that Weezer betrayed who they once were and tried to be something too different, something that we didn’t like.
For a chunk of the earliest (and what now could be called casual) fans, apparently that album was Pinkerton. Of course, true hardcore fans loved Pink from the beginning and most love it still, as I think I’ve already expressed more times than necessary.
For many others, it was The Green Album. But I liked Green. Perhaps a big part of the appeal for me is that I was just grateful for any new music after years of nothing and the tragedy of losing Matt’s joie de vivre. And yes, most of the songs were pretty poppy, pretty vanilla, and kind of forgettable, but they were also pretty fun. They definitely had that “Weezer sound,” even though they felt stripped of any emotion whatsoever, saving any show of deeper feelings for some of the fantastic B-sides of that era.
When Maladroit came out the next year it didn’t seem as polarizing, probably because the fans that were going to leave had already left. Maladroit sounded like a continuation of Green, albeit a little bit harder rocking, serving as more of a plateau of their sound than something that was better or worse.
But it was their 5th album, Make Believe, that ushered in a new era of Weezer: the pop-pandering, vague, fluffy stuff that didn’t seem to come from the same band that made Pink or even Blue. The worst songs on the album are the singles, and are precursors to some of the really not-great stuff they’ve put out in the years since. “Beverly Hills” exists, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and “We Are All On Drugs” sounds like a version of that “Diarrhea” song we all learned in grade school: “When you show up late for school and you think it’s really cool, diarrhea, diarrhea.”
It’s not what I really want to hear in my head when I listen to Weezer, but there it is and remains to this day (and there it is for you, now, too. Sorry/not sorry).
In spite of all of that, I actually really liked Make Believe; it, too, spoke to what I was going through in my life at the time. Do I break up with my on-again-off-again boyfriend because it’s not what I thought I wanted (“Perfect Situation”)? After all, I’ve never successfully navigated a healthy relationship; why would I ever think I could start now (“This is Such a Pity”)? Or should I just forget about perfection and embrace fun and comfort (“My Best Friend”)? This set of songs, singles notwithstanding, is far stronger than all of Green.
And for me, for a really long time, Weezer could do no wrong. Sure, we were still waiting for the potential that we had seen in Blue and Pink. Sure, Green wasn’t perfect, Maladroit was uneven, Make Believe’s biggest hit felt impersonal (at best!), but among those albums, there was plenty of good content, and the promise of more.
SNL Weezer Skit (December 2018)
You’ve probably heard of this beauty of an SNL skit if you haven’t seen it already–it’s 4 minutes of Matt Damon and Leslie Jones holding court over where the line should be drawn in Weezer’s discography. It captures the unique makeup of Weezer’s most hardcore fans and is probably the most relatable skit (for me) that SNL has ever done. Leslie Jones nails it–her character’s initial restraint just kills me. I feel seen!!So, now we’re finally to “What album changed Weezer for you?”
Perhaps surprisingly, that album was The Red Album, released on June 3, 2008.
If I’d heard the singles, “Pork and Beans” or “Troublemaker”, in early high school I probably would have loved them. They’re fun and I’ve now learned to enjoy them. But at the time, coming from a 39-year-old Rivers (when I was on the cusp of 30 myself) they sounded off, like he was trying too hard to pander to middle schoolers. For the first time, I found myself cringing.
But that wasn’t all. On one hand, it seemed like a good thing that Rivers was giving the other members a chance to shine with a few of their own songs on the album (Pat wrote and sings lead on the underwhelming “Automatic”, and Brian does the same on a folksy, enjoyable-but-out-of-place “Thought I Knew”). But I’m afraid it just didn’t work here.
The album, overall, is super uneven, more so than any previous one. Conversely, there’s the sweet “Dreamin’” and especially “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn),” which is an incredible song, one of their best, and it’s kind of torture to see the potential of what direction Weezer could have gone in after hearing an intricate, multi-layered, fascinatingly composed song like that one.
When it comes down to it, though, it’s a single track that changed things for me. The Red Album plays host to what I would consider the first really bad Weezer song. I’m talking unlistenable bad. (From the band that I just said could do no wrong)!
That song is called “Cold Dark World” and it has a wah-wah pedal, the instrumentals during the chorus create this thudding, derivative beat, like a six year old could play it, and Rivers puts on this weird tough-guy voice as he sings. It’s that overused casual fan complaint—it doesn’t sound like Weezer!—but in this case, I feel validated in using it.
And sure, all those aspects are kind of cheesy but worth overlooking if the lyrics really deliver, right? Deliver they do, but not in a good way:
I'm not like the others, I'll be like a brother I will protect you, never disrespect you But if you need love then I'll be here to sex you
Let that last line sink in. I don’t know how to get around the “ew” factor of this line. I’m not a fan of sexually explicit lyrics; feed me nuance all day long, please! Thousands of musicians and poets and artists have been doing it for centuries; you don’t have to go straight to the point* to get the message across that you’re writing about love or sex. Here, it's too direct, and it feels both super lazy and super gross.
*(see what I did there? Ha!)
As I was writing this, I learned that the person on vocals is not Rivers doing a weird tough-guy voice at all, but is actually Scott (who is the co-writer; hence why these non-Rivers songs should not have been included!). Even if the song is from the perspective of a character, such as a creepy serial killer dude, and not Rivers or Scott themselves, I would still not enjoy listening to a song like this. There’s nothing wrong with darkness—I’m all for darkness done right (see Cobra Starship’s “It’s Warmer in the Basement” for what I mean)—but this song sits all wrong with me.
So perhaps it wasn’t an album that killed my mood for “The New Weezer”, and perhaps it wasn’t a single song, but just one line. Is it unfair of me? Probably. Do I stand by my assessment? Yes I do.
I still listen to it occasionally, each time hoping to find some sort of redemption, and I never do.
The albums that followed, Raditude (2009) and Hurley (2010) are maligned and intertwined. To this day, I can’t distinguish which songs are on which album (I had to look it up as I was writing this, and I realized I’d mixed them up, again). There are only 2-3 decent songs on each. The bouncy, simple fun of “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” and “Memories” and “Ruling Me” can’t redeem the albums overall, but at least they try.
But some tracks are just so lyrically awful that the mere existence of any one of them makes me question Rivers’ intellect. If there’s one thing I can’t tolerate, it’s terrible lyrics. (Or just lazy. Even in “If You’re Wondering If I Want You To”, he irritatingly uses the words “meatloaf” and “meat” in the same line. How easy would it have been to think of another meat-word with two syllables? “Prime Rib”. “Chick-en”. “Tur-key”. I fancy “pork chop,” and I change the lyric in my head every time. You’re welcome, Rivers).
After all, just because you wear nerdy glasses and went to Harvard doesn’t automatically make you smart. I’ve met enough Ivy Leaguers to know that they’re no more intellectual than I!
And sure, all of this is totally subjective, but I was appalled that the same person who wrote “Only in Dreams” also wrote (and recorded, and thought people would want to hear) a song called “I’m Your Daddy.” (The instrumentals of which are actually really good! But—and this is just a personal preference—I don’t want to hear any grown man refer to themselves in that way unless they’re talking about the relationship they have with their own children)!
I also feel like right now is a good time to mention the “controversy” surrounding a couple of the lines in Pinkerton (specifically from two of my favorites, “Across the Sea” and “El Scorcho”), which may have confused or offended some people, taken out of context. I don’t need to give it a lot of discussion because, honestly, I just don’t feel like it warrants it. Maybe it’s because I was a 17-year-old girl when it came out and I was never bothered that he was singing about a young fan who wanted to know more about him; heck, I wrote in to the Weezine asking about each member’s marital status (my favorite, from Karl: “I’m still living a Yoda-like existence”).
(I wasn’t going to share that part here originally because it’s kind of embarrassing, but I needed to know my odds).
I can see myself as both the girl in “Across the Sea” and Rivers, who is singing about being apart from something real amidst all the uncertainty. Maybe that makes me biased, fine, but if you want to get a thorough analysis about why it’s just not an issue, see my notes at the end for the Finding Emo podcast episode on Pinkerton. They cover it nicely, and none of them are teenage girls like I was.
But if all that wasn’t an issue then (or now) for me, what’s the big deal about some of the newer lyrics? For me, it was just a completely different situation than on Pinkerton. Ultimately it was the half-assed, icky lyrical side of Rivers’ newer work that just turned me off big time. Like, can I ever imagine now that I had a crazy crush on him almost thirty years ago?
Personally, I just felt like Rivers could do better. Yes, I held (and admittedly, still hold) him to a higher standard than just about every other songwriter I knew. Look at one of their companion bands, Green Day. The building blocks were always there, but roughly 10 years after their breakthrough, they had clearly evolved to write American Idiot, a jaw-droppingly stunning rock opera, with sonic-speed guitars and super catchy hooks, a narrative story to tell, and a whole lot of radical depth. It was both mainstream and groundbreaking—not an easy task! American Idiot is a masterpiece; almost 20 years later, it’s more relevant than ever. I really thought that Rivers was capable of something like that, too. (There’s a side story about a lost Weezer rock opera linked here if you want to know more).
At the end of the day, even with the input from the other members, it’s still Rivers Cuomo’s band, and he hasn’t always used that creative control in ways that us long-time fans appreciated or understood. After all, that SNL skit was clearly written by a fan who knows.
Even the better additions of the lyrical punch of Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014) and the sunny California rock of The White Album (2016) couldn’t get me back into it (at the time). They’ve released five more full albums and four EPs in the ensuing years: four originals (which I don’t own and haven’t heard any songs from), their SZNZ series (I just got “Spring” and “Winter”) and one full of covers, The Teal Album (2019), which I do have (it was a gift), and is a respectable contribution to the covers genre (if it can be called that). The video for Take On Me makes the whole thing worthwhile.
But…now I have to ask the same question that that young fan asked in Charlotte back in 1997: Which song has the most meaning for you now, Riv? Is it “Where’s My Sex?” Or perhaps “Run Over by a Truck”?, Nope, it’s definitely “I Want a Dog”. Can you look me dead in the eyes and tell me that these have as much meaning for you as, oh, “Across the Sea”? “Butterfly”? Even “Surf Wax America”?
Sigh.
If you’ve made it this far (if so, thank you!), you may be wondering a) what my favorite Weezer song is and b) if, after all these years, they’re still my favorite band (we’ll get to that very soon). But now that I’ve just dogged on the band whose latest song talks about wanting a dog (as of earlier this year, when I started writing), this essay series would not be complete without my list of the BEST Weezer songs. (I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Weezer’s definitely going to be one of the top rock bands in the coming months)!
Here are my 15 favorite Weezer songs. Number 6-15 can be moved all over the place, but I doubt anything will ever change my Top 5. (All the ones with official videos are starred):
1. Across the Sea 2. Undone (The Sweater Song)* 3. My Name is Jonas 4. No One Else 5. The Good Life* 6. Susanne 7. Why Bother? 8. Buddy Holly* 9. You Gave Your Love To Me Softly 10. Say It Ain’t So* 11. El Scorcho* 12. Only in Dreams 13. Tired Of Sex 14. I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams 15. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived 16. TIE: EVERY OTHER SONG ON BLUE AND PINK, PLUS B-SIDES FROM THAT ERA (Mykel and Carli, Devotion, etc.) AND GREEN B-SIDES
If Blink-182’s mature, nuanced 2003 Untitled album (wait, did I just call them mature? And nuanced?) was the influential uncle to early to mid-2000s emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, then Pinkerton, released seven years prior, was the gentler-but-still-dramatic introspective influencer to many more punk, rock, and third wave emo bands, such as Yellowcard and All-American Rejects, to name a few of the bigger ones. I’m not a music critic—shockingly, my career did not take off after that newspaper article I wrote back in high school—but I’ve been in the know enough over the past twenty years to recognize how deeply both Blue and Pink influenced these bands, filled with guys my age (mostly guys) who first heard Weezer at the same time I did.
There were also plenty of Weezer-adjacent alternative, pop-punk, and ska bands that were blowing up, relatively speaking, around the same time. I got introduced to more punk and emo from a comp called “Where’s the Beef?”, the second release from a new indie label called Drive-Thru Records. I bought it because Space Twins (Brian’s band) had a song on it, but there were a ton of other really good songs, too.
Drive-Thru was run by friends of Mykel and Carli, Richard and Stefanie, and they knew that the best way to get kids to buy their records was to put free music in their hands. They sent a bunch of stickers and CDs to my college P.O. Box, and that’s how I discovered New Found Glory and another band that became a favorite, Midtown, and bought a bunch of other pop-punk albums from bands from exotic places like Tampa and Asbury Park.
(But that whole story is for another time).
Finally, the question you’ve all been waiting for: is Weezer still my Number One?
Answer: They’re one of my favorite bands and always will be. As the line in “LA Girlz” (on The White Album) says, “Does anybody love anybody as much as I love you, baby?” So it goes, back to one of the first lines of this whole essay series, There was no one who could love a band more than I loved Weezer.
But I’m pretty sure I’m not nearly as rabid anymore as some of the new fans. From pictures and videos of their concerts this summer, there are plenty of insane Weezer fans out there, many of whom weren’t even born when the band first started. There’s a picture of a girl at a concert, and she’s crying (she looks like she’s just wailing, as though her dog died), but it’s because she caught their set list after the show. It’s just impossible not to laugh at the ridiculous emotion of this girl. (Also because I’m biased against people taking selfies of themselves crying. Please, no performances).
I’m sorry to disappoint anyone, but Weezer’s not Number One and hasn’t been for awhile. The title of my favorite band belongs to Jimmy Eat World. They’ve been around since 1993, just a year after Weezer began, but had a bit of a slower climb to mainstream success, and I didn’t hear about them until around 2000. I only became a real fan when their biggest hit, “The Middle”, was all over alternative rock airwaves. I got their amazing fourth album, Bleed American, summer 2001, working backwards to their earlier albums, and since then have worked forwards all the way up into now.
Five years after I took all the South Carolina Weezer Fanclubbers to Finlay Park in Columbia, I would see Jimmy Eat World for the first time just across the grass, on a balmy, September night underneath the butterflies stars. Some of us know how good this band is, how solid their work is, but overall, they’re pretty underrated in the rock world. They should be huge, but selfishly, I’m glad they’re not. When I lived in Arizona, their home state, I got to see them almost annually, from larger shows to smaller venues. As I just heard on a podcast (and I’m paraphrasing), “Jimmy Eat World isn’t a band for kids these days. Jimmy Eat World is for us.”
The band doesn’t have a fan club, but ironically, Mykel and Carli were friends of theirs, and at the time of their deaths, there had already been talks about the girls spearheading their fan club, too. Things might have gone differently for me had that been the case, but us Weezer fans knew even back then that “Hear You Me” on Bleed American is about Mykel and Carli.
I’ve come to understand a lot about my appreciation for Weezer by listening to Jimmy Eat World, though. You may not love every single album from your favorite band, but don’t give up. Two or three great songs out of ten or twelve is not always a bad thing (which counters what I just said about Raditude and Hurley, so it’s helping me see those albums differently. A little).
Over the years, they’ve had a ton of incredible albums (for newbies, I recommend the poppy and never disappointing Chase This Light, or if you want your heart to explode, my personal favorite is Futures), and then some others that didn’t hit me that same way. But their tenth and most recent album, Surviving, is fantastic, especially for a band that’s been around—with the same lineup!—for thirty years. The guitar/drum duet in “Criminal Energy” rocks my face off, and “One Mil”, a highlight on the album for me, is the best Pinkerton-era-Weezer-sounding song I’ve heard in decades, and Rivers didn’t even write it!
What I feel Weezer has gotten wrong in recent years is what Jimmy Eat World has gotten right: instead of falling into the trap of goofiness and immaturity (Blink-182’s got that market cornered—we need something else from Weezer!), Jimmy Eat World acknowledges that you can be just as emotional and angsty in your forties as you were in your teens or early twenties. Maturing as a person and as a musician means taking what you already know and reflecting on all the experiences you’ve had in life, and that it’s okay to still feel things deeply, long after whatever happened happened.
Jimmy Eat World’s emotional lyrics, loud shredding guitars, killer drums, and their strategic use of silence packs the punch that my adult heart will always love. Whereas some of Rivers’ lyrics can, at worst, come across as stunted and closed off, Jim Adkins and Co. are not afraid to be vulnerable and put it all out there.
Jim, Zach, Tom, and Rick are emotionally intelligent, professional, fairly normal guys and friends, who also happen to be successful (minor?) rock stars. I know that they love all the Arizona professional sports teams and the Cardinals, Suns, and Diamondbacks love them back)!
I don’t need to know all about them, their hobbies, their favorite food, or their birthdays. For who I am now, only the songs matter to me.
Falling in love with a band is a lot like falling in love with a person. The dopamine rush I felt when I heard Weezer’s songs or learned anything new about the band or even saw that shade of blue was the same feeling as making eye contact with a crush—I would do anything to stay on that high. Without a real romantic relationship during that time, I could pour all my love into this one band, a group of four twenty-somethings who, together, became a whole other entity entirely, its own living, breathing thing, something tangible and intangible, something made up of humans but not quite human itself.
It’s undoubtedly surreal to the actual humans involved. Pat, Rivers, Brian, and Scott (and Matt) (and Karl!) are real individuals with real lives and weird quirks and maybe they don’t always clean up the dishes and maybe there were times on the tour bus when somebody didn’t shower and maybe someone’s actually incorrigible and they’re putting on a damn good front, but what they’ve got together is, in a word, extraordinary.
It’s what Rivers wanted all along, but did he really know what it would entail? Honestly, I think he did. And he did it, and he’s doing it. How many people who want to be rock stars actually get to be rock stars? Lucky him!
Just like new love, Weezer was perfect to me, thrilling and intoxicating like a drug; comfortable and homey, like a warm, cozy sweater.
Why has it been thirteen years since I’ve been to a Weezer concert? I could give all sorts of understandable “adult” reasons, like not being able to travel for distant shows, the rising cost of concerts these days, or demanding jobs that kept me busy. But I also wasn’t paying as close attention anymore, and with their ever-expanding discography and the even more expansive internet, I couldn’t clip every interview or grab every B-side, even if I wanted. They had gotten too big for me to hold on to.
And not only that, I felt they had strayed so far from what they once were that the band from the first two brilliant albums was a hazy memory. I still mourn the loss of who they were then. Just like the end of young love, it’s that stomach drop when you realize that what you thought you had was never really yours to begin with.
So even though I’ve been out of the loop for awhile, and even though I thought my Weezer phase had long since expired, a funny thing happened as I was writing all of this: I started to like Weezer again! Like, really like them. (And maybe that comes as no surprise to anyone reading this, but it was a bit of a surprise to me)!
I’m happy to be able to start accepting them for who they are right now, humans and not Rock Gods, who don’t have the exact same brain I do and sometimes make doofy choices or even choices I think are really bad. But they’re like family, and in my mature years, I can accept them for everything they are.
Weezer is so closely aligned with who I was when I was young; to reject them fully would be like rejecting a part of myself.
There are some bright spots and some promising flickers, too. I’m re-appreciating The White Album, for one. And I recently noticed some familiar titles on some “newer” albums. “The Prettiest Girl in the Whole Wide World” on Raditude’s bonus disc (which I forgot I had) is an old song from the early days between Blue and Pink. And I have to check out their 2021 album, Van Weezer, which has “Sheila Can Do It,” another song I’d previously only heard on my Rivers solo show bootleg tapes.
There’s a heck of a lot to be said about longevity as a rock band; Weezer has existed for over thirty years. Thirty! Bass player Scott, the “newest” member, has been with them for twenty years. That’s twice as long as Matt and Mikey combined. I wonder if he feels like he has to still prove himself to fans like me. (Probably not. He’s probably pretty comfortable with the path he’s chosen)!
As a person, over the course of three decades, you’ll undoubtedly make a few choices you wish you had made differently, or decisions you initially regretted and now accept as part of your story. So it goes for a band that has stuck together for that long. The lasting power they’ve experienced is incredibly rare. That is a commendable achievement.
And…guess who’s a member of the fanclub again?! Apparently it was restarted in 2014, about twelve years after it fizzled, but I didn’t find out about it until I started working on this project earlier this year. With no Mykel and Carli, no Weezine or DIY-feel of the club, a lot has changed (communication comes through an app). The fanclub numbers have reached into the 8000s and there are a lot of young’uns, so I’m not sure how much in common I have with the newer members, but it would be pretty cool to reconnect with others like me. I’ve already done so with a handful of people (you cool cats know who you are!) and I hope that we can keep the conversation going!
Being a part of this group, even after so many changes in the life of the band, and certainly after a lot of changes in my own life, feels very much like coming home again.
Finally, it was a complete coincidence that during the writing of this, Weezer announced a headlining summer tour, The Indie Rock Road Trip (I’m not sure they can be considered “indie rock” but perhaps it refers to their openers. Whatever). By the time you read this, I will be seeing them for the first time in thirteen years, which, as it turns out, is the same exact amount of time between when I first saw them (1997) and when I last saw them (2010). A fitting crossroads.
I have wanted to write about “what Weezer meant to me” for years. I knew it would be a daunting task, trying to fit everything in, trying to convey precisely how big of a fan I was and how much I liked them. After all, Blue and Pink are as real to me today as the moment they both crashed into my ears. How can such a big thing be fully captured by words?
I’ve been immersed in “Weezer Brain” since January, waking up before 6:00 several days a week just to sleepily stumble into this Weezery world. It’s been really fun to relearn stuff I used to know by heart, as well as find out what has been going on for the past decade that I’ve been “away.” Rereading the Weezines, cover to cover, as well as all those letters from my Weezer pen pals has been particularly emotional at times.
Writing this piece has also been practice for another even bigger project that I’m really excited to share in a year or two. One thing I’ve learned from all of this is that it’s never too late to embrace what you love, and don’t apologize for it, no matter how niche! Life’s too short to feel stifled. Go do that thing you always wanted to do!
If you’re here, you’ve been with me for the long haul, and I am so grateful for that. Thank you! It means the world to me. As any writer (famous or not) will tell you, we don’t expect everyone to identify with or even like everything we write. (I know that this last section is feeling pretty drawn-out, at least to me; it has all taken far longer than I anticipated, and it’s almost time for a break)!
And it doesn’t matter that a lot of these events happened years ago or that most of it seems pretty innocuous; I still feel overly self-conscious about some of it, and overly proud of some other aspects of it. I have to fight the urge to both spill too much and censor myself when I’m writing about personal topics.
But in writing autobiographical stories, it’s important to me to express myself as authentically as possible; representing how I felt at the time in a genuine way, even if it may be surprising to others, or I leave something out, or if my feelings have since changed. Who I am on the page is who I am as a person, even if I come across as less than perfect.
Because stories about perfect people—or bands, if there are such things—are boring.
Now enough writing about writing! Let’s look back at Weezer one last time.
Nothing like this will ever happen to me again. Sometimes that’s hard to process, and I start heading down the mental vortex of aging and mortality and I get all dark, but most of the time, it’s okay. I now have the wisdom and the clarity to understand better what it all meant and why it was so important to me at that time. This kind of insight just wasn’t possible back then, due to my young age, the very limited resources available then, and the fact that the situation was just too close while I was going through it.
All of that kind of sounds like I went through something traumatic, and some of the time surrounding it was traumatic—the bullying, the accident, the transition from childhood home to college and simply growing up—but doesn’t all that apply to something formative and positive and groundbreaking, too?
When I was fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and the only person in my physical orbit who felt so strongly about Weezer, it was both a point of pride and the reason for feeling deeply isolated. This is the paradox I have struggled to articulate for many years: how I was bolstered by what felt like an incredible secret about the power of one rock band, and yet, if I hadn’t taken that path, I might have fit in better with everyone else around me in that moment in time.
But then, with a little help, I found the community of the fan club and my pen pals and realized that there were kids in other schools all around the country who were also alone in their rooms, listening to Weezer, and wondering why they, too, were the only ones who felt this way. And with them, I knew that I wasn’t alone. We were the ones who had been right all along.
When I’m dead and gone, a few still-breathing souls will remember me and say, “Man, that girl sure did like Weezer.” And I’m cool with that.
Liner Notes
Other than my memory, my journals, and my own collection of Weezery things, I used a lot of additional resources to build this piece and make sure I was giving as accurate information as possible. Here are a few more gold nuggets, in case you’d like to learn more.
Thank yous, then and now
This would have been a lot harder to write (or experience!) without these people: David, Rowan, my parents, Carl, Katie, Leslie, Elizabeth, Peter, George, Donny, Chris, Adam, Mary, Rebecca, Jonathan, Steve, Chris, Jed, Alec, Rivers, Brian, Matt, Pat, Scott, Karl, Mikey, Mykel and Carli.
Websites
Weezerpedia has everything you need to know! My favorite page lists every concert they’ve ever done, plus setlists as available.
Further reading: Articles/Books/Print (NOT an exhaustive list!)
Rivers’ Edge by John Luerssen. I read this book years ago so I don’t know how it holds up, but it’s pretty much the only book on Weezer out there so far.
Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo by Andy Greenwald. There’s a whole (very short) chapter on Weezer. Essential reading.
The 20 Greatest Weezer Songs Ranked (Kerrang!). It’s always interesting to read what the critics and listmakers say about Weezer…
You Should Dress Like Weezer on Letterman in 1995 (GQ) This one is weird but great, too. It’s exactly what the title says it is!
Videos (note: when I tried to link all these here, they sent as attachments to the email, and I think most of you don’t want a dozen attachments. I’ll re-link them on the webpage so if you click here you can get back to the videos, if you want to watch them).
Weezer performs “Undone” on Conan This was their very first TV performance! Remember how Conan was ahead of the times and helped break new bands?
Weezer performs “Say It Ain’t So” on Letterman Unlike the video premiere on MTV, I definitely saw this at the time. So freaking cool!!
MTV Video Music Awards Acceptance At 1.5 minutes, a must-see to understand why everything was so confusing back then (the five people on stage: Brian, Matt (in the costume), Karl, Spike Jonze (director), and Pat Finn (longtime friend of the band)
Weezer Cruise Opening Credits Only watch this if you have a sense of humor
What Makes This Song Stink: Beverly Hills This gimmicky video is surprisingly insightful and sweet.
Podcasts
There’s a list of Weezer podcasts on Weezerpedia here, but it turns out that I prefer music podcasts that focus on more than just one band (with one exception below). I linked Apple podcasts, since that’s what I use, but you can find them in various formats.
Talking Records Podcast Host Jed spotlights Weezer in Episodes 6 (Blue) and 55 (Pinkerton). This series is great for fans of punk music.
60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s This is probably the most professionally done podcast here, from The Ringer. This series is great for anyone who grew up in the ‘90s. This episode is about Weezer, but plenty of episodes are excellent. So relatable and gut-bustingly funny.
Finding Emo The discography of this podcast reads like they raided my CD collection (and the guys talk about/gush over a different Jimmy Eat World album annually) so I concur with a lot of what I’ve heard so far! Episode 34 is about Pinkerton, and if you want to listen to three guys talk about the album for over two hours, this is totally for you! Honestly, though, it’s the best unpacking of the “controversy” about the “problematic” aspects of the album, and an essential deep dive for hardcore Weezer fans.
Post-Pinkerton This Episode 20 on the song “The Girl Got Hot” is a great example of what I’m talking about with “Cold Dark World.” It could have been the same conversation. This podcast isn’t updated anymore, but there are dozens of extremely well-researched episodes from which to choose. Excellent.
'The story of Mykel and Carli, Weezer's most legendary fans' — Derrick Clements I quoted this podcast earlier in Part 2, and this standalone piece is really good. He interviews Mykel and Carli’s mom, who is so sweet (she sadly died in 2021, and their dad died a few years earlier). This podcast is great if you want to learn some important fanclub history but don’t want to get sucked into a new series!
(HSNE) High School Never Ends: A Pop Punk Dad Podcast This podcast covers a lot of post-Weezer bands from the late nineties and early 2000s, but in exciting news, I got to be a guest during their “WEEZtember” mini series in September 2023! Listen to me chat with the hosts (one of whom is a big Weezer fan, and the other isn’t) about the Blue Album and why it’s so rad. It was super fun!
Weezer Mega-Fan Stuff
Weezer Fanclub Signup Accepting applications now, must include your essay “What Weezer Means to Me” (kidding, kidding)
Weezer Fan For just $14, you can get this fantastic graphic novel/comic book by Alec Longstreth, a cartoonist who also happens to be a huge Weezer fan (duh) and has a really fascinating story about his longtime connection to the band. If you liked what I wrote but thought it was too long and detailed and didn’t have enough pictures, Alec’s book is far more succinct, just as entertaining, and fabulously illustrated. (You can also check it all out online but it’s worth paying for the front and back cover alone. I highly recommend buying this book and supporting Alec)!
The Weezine Omnibus Deluxe Edition Speaking of Alec, he (along with Karl as editor) compiled and designed this amazing resource for all the hardcore fans out there! A mega-book that details all of Mykel’s and Carli’s incredible hard work and dedication to the fan club, it’s a full-color collection of all the Weezines, plus a ton of behind-the-scenes gems and stories. It fills in the blanks of some of the events I got to be a part of back then. I could have written all of this without the Omnibus (because of course I still have every single Weezine!), but I’m glad I didn’t have to! And for much more of Alec’s work with Weezer, check this out and also check out the phenomenal sets for their tour this summer—he designed them!!