The year is 2050. Cars can fly, and football has been banned following a series of on-field deaths. The polar ice caps are long gone, I still can’t get proper reception with my cellphone, and Weezer has just released a new album.

My friends, Weezer will likely outlast us all. A nuclear holocaust could happen, and Weezer and cockroaches would be the only survivors. I can’t speak to the musical tastes of cockroaches, but I have to assume that at least a segment of them would be drawn to Weezer’s endlessly endearing pop-rock sensibilities.

Back in August, Weezer released their 20th album. Yes, their 20th album. The Gold Album follows 2022’s quartet of albums, the SZNZ albums. Each record was named and thematically geared around a season because Weezer loves themes almost as much as they love pop-drenched, big rock chords. For a band that is as long in the tooth as they are, Weezer haven’t really shown any signs of slowing down. They released 5 albums in the 2010s and had already released 6 albums this decade by the time 2022 was over. Such a productive clip makes four years between records seem like a lifetime, but the band was still out there touring during that time, so it’s not as if they vanished off the face of the earth.

But wait, we’re still counting because The Gold Album is also the band’s seventh color album.

Now, if you’ve followed Weezer at all during their three decades together, then you know that in general, the color albums are the safe bets, minus a few exceptions, with Pinkerton, which was released 30 years ago today being the main one. At some point along the way, the color albums became the course-correction albums for Weezer, the ones they’d release when they had strayed too far into no man’s land and needed to come back up for air (i.e., remind their fans why they like Weezer).

The last two color records were the meh Black Album and the Teal Album, which was their ill-advised but understandably opportunistic covers album they released given the success of their cover of “Africa” by Toto. The fact that they chose to include the 2019 covers album in the color albums canon was only part of what made that album so regrettable. The cover of “No Scrubs” was another reason.

But alas, Weezer keeps on keeping on. Despite their most recent releases being somewhat lackluster, it’s become clear that while there are few guarantees in life, a Weezer album having at least two or so good to decent songs on it is one of them. Hence the power of Weezer.

That power of Weezer remarkably took shape all the way back in 1994 with the release of The Blue Album. With everyone slowly emerging from the sudden impact of the grunge movement, which descended upon us like a freak summer thunderstorm and was then gone as quickly as it came, the unbearable lightness of being that was Weezer’s debut album was a welcome breath of fresh air. Everything had gotten so serious in rock music, and then the lovable dorks of Weezer showed up with their big, fun guitars, catchy hooks, and ten songs that never seemed to get old. Weezer was a welcome reminder that rock music didn’t have to be all doom and gloom and heavy-weighted subject matter. Sometimes rock music could just be a few chords, a fast-paced tempo, and lyrics about surfing.

Then, of course, Weezer became victims of revisionist history. Their second album, Pinkerton, was a weird and experimental left turn for the band (oddly enough, it was a sign of things to come for the band, as we’d eventually learn that they were going to take chances, whether fans liked it or not). Fans tried talking themselves into it but ultimately chose to keep going back to The Blue Album. Cuomo was disheartened by the response, retreated from the spotlight, went to Harvard, and found a bass player to replace original bassist Matt Sharp.

It would be five years before Weezer would return, and when they did, they did so with a sound that was much more aligned with The Blue Album than Pinkerton, which was still about a decade away from being properly appreciated.

The Green Album was the band’s first attempt at reviving their stalled career, and it worked. Weezer was back, and there was much rejoicing and celebration across (parts) of the land. Much like The Blue Album, The Green Album was light, upbeat, enjoyable, and easy to digest. It’s not like Pinkerton was a slog, but compared to The Blue Album, it was an albatross, not going anywhere. Again, though, time is a fickle bastard sometimes, and in this case, time was needed to really appreciate how good Pinkerton was and continues to be. Thirty years in, it remains the band’s most artistically impressive album.

The Top 10 Weezer Albums Ranked

10. OK Human (2021)
9. Pacific Daydream (2017)
8. Everything Will Be Alright In The End (2014)
7. The Red Album (2008)
6. The White Album (2016)
5. Make Believe (2005)
4. The Green Album (2001)
3. Maladroit (2002)
2. Pinkerton (1996)
1. The Blue Album (1994)

Looking at it that way, it’s easy to see something of a trend. These second and third decades of Weezer’s career have been a little rocky. It started out with the unfortunate one-two-three punch of Raditude, Death to False Metal, and Hurley, and things would have been truly dire for the band if not for the aforementioned course-correction albums.

The White Album, in particular, is especially solid, though it may have come too late to really help the band’s cause. By that point, you were either still a Weezer fan, or you weren’t. And even then, fans were split into camps: those who checked out sometime between Make Believe and The Red Album, and those who stuck with them.

It’s then hard to say who the course-correction albums were even for anymore. But at least they still exist, if nothing else to serve as a reminder of that version of Weezer from 1994, the version so many people fell in love with. Or The Green Album version of the band, which introduced the band to a whole new generation of fans.

Either way, Weezer seemed incredibly self-aware when it came to making sure they didn’t bite the hand that feeds them.

Hell, they even wrote a song about it.

Looking forward, it’s hard to chart out Weezer’s future and to see what the next few years may have in store for them. OK Human was a decent album. At the very least, it showed that when they were looking to spice things up, the band didn’t always turn to cheesy gimmicks or flavors of the month. That in and of itself is an interesting development and something of a win for long time fans and Weezer purists. As for Van Weezer or the SZSN albums? Eh, they’re not for me, which is fine. And I heard The Gold Album was decent, but at this point, I’m not sure I need any more Weezer in my life or, more specifically, any new Weezer in my life.

For any band to survive together for over thirty years is nothing short of impressive, and I do think the fact that Weezer has endured for so long and continued to find ways into the zeitgeist is impressive, if not unbelievable if you were to go back in time and consider that a reality back when they first hit the scene. Especially after Pinkerton, Weezer seemed destined to fade into the rearview mirror and leave us content to celebrate The Blue Album and eventually appreciate Pinkerton. But they just kept coming back. They’d fall on their face and come back, do it again and come back again. For a lot of bands, it’s usually personal issues such as drugs or alcohol that result in such lapses, but for Weezer, it was the artistic choices of Rivers Cuomo and company. We generally want bands we love to take chances, but take chances within reason. They can go explore and experiment, but they still need to resemble the band we’ve always loved. If they drift too far from that mark, that’s when problems arise.

What’s wild about Weezer is that they’ve always been Weezer, for better or worse. There is a bizarre, yet undeniable narrative throughline to the band that follows them wherever they go, no matter how weird that road might be. And I think it’s why people can’t quit the band. Weezer means something for a certain demographic (you know, the old people in the room), and it makes them almost protective of the band. I mean, I don’t pay much mind to their latest stuff, but I will gladly defend them if needed because of how much I care about what they did back in the day.

Will that loyalty last forever? I don’t know.

But I know that as long as Rivers Cuomo is around, there will be Weezer, and not even a nuclear holocaust can stop them, so I’m willing to wait this one out.

Categories: Music

Tags: weezer