#ok human

Day 37: OK Rouxls

Having spent the past year or so exploring their discography with a lot of genuine fascination, I figured it might be fun to put together my own ranking of Weezer's output. The alt-rock, pop-rock band is one you've no doubt seen some memes about, possibly heard a song or two from; but I find their overall discography isn't discussed as much as it ought to be for how fantastically varied and thoroughly interesting it all is.

So, first off; Why should you listen to Weezer? Well, I'd personally argue that their music can serve as a fantastic gateway into the world of listening to albums in general. The band, be it on albums good or bad, have a knack for writing earworms that hold your attention throughout, and each album is typically embodying a really clearly defined ethos that's explored in a well-paced runtime. Additionally, I find that lead singer and songwriter Rivers Cuomo's annunciation is so clear and crisp to where their songs are all really easy to process, even for non-native English speakers like myself.

Most crucially, however, Weezer's output is incredibly diverse despite all falling under the broad umbrella of "alt pop-rock". The below list is nowhere near a common consensus online, and you may find albums that I personally don't care for to be far more your speed. It's almost all worth a listen and a Wikipedia-page read, basically!

Should you use this list to know where to start with Weezer? If you want to - sure! In my opinion there's no right or wrong place to start with Weezer, so long as you do a little bit of reading of what the album is aiming for beforehand and go in with an open mind. Use this list as a reference point for what you think sounds interesting; and if you can't decide, just start with their super-solid debut - Weezer (1994) - and branch out from there. The full, concise 1-to-20 list will also be at the bottom of the post after entry 20.

A last note; this ranking includes all four individual parts of the 2022 project "SZNZ", which consists of four EPs themed around the seasons of the year. Regardless of what I think of each part individually, the project was made to be listened to chronologically – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter – and I advise you to do the same if any one part of it catches your eye through this read.

1. Everything Will Be Alright In The End (2014)

Made for the band's 20th anniversary with four years of production, there's an intense feeling of finality that permeates all throughout Everything Will Be Alright In The End ("EWBAITE" from here on). It brings the band back at full force after years of leaving fans dissatisfied in their experimental output, yet at the same time hardly feels like the album is attempting to just go "back to basics". Above all else, EWBAITE feels like a reflection of everything the band has learned, putting their everything into one big explosive hurrah for the Weezer legacy.

As part of that reflection, the album is an exploration of three different themes: romance, expectations and fatherhood. At first glance, these themes may appear wildly different, but they can all be grouped up into one core term, one that Weezer itself has explored multiple times in the lead-up to EWBAITE; Relationships. Be it relationships with women, one's relationship with an ever-divided fanbase, or the relationship one has with their father (and the very concept of fatherhood), the album is able to dynamically bounce between different topics from song to song whilst also having individual songs cover multiple topics at once through this shared unity.

This isn't even to mention the sound of the album itself, which operates under a similar philosophy, being quite varied whilst still having a deliciously crunchy guitar-led core tying it all together. The album's opening track Ain't Got Nobody perfectly exemplifies all of these talking points; it's crunchy, emotional, melodic and climactic, althewhile being about the very idea of becoming alienated from those that you wish to be loved by; the idea of relationships, the thought of wanting to be appreciated, be it through romance, fan adoration or validation from your folks. Tons of other songs also play with rhythm in infectious ways, like penultimate track Cleopatra - itself acting as a subversion of the typical Weezer love song by instead being about rejection.

All of this is to say that EWBAITE manages the impossible across its 40-minute runtime, feeling at once cohesive, varied, concise and broad in a way that can only really be described with one word; Perfect. It's a wonderful album that I've been chewing on for months and months since I first heard it, one where every song sounds at once different from the next while having the exact sound that I want the band to provide. I mentioned earlier that the album feels like the culmination of everything the band has learned, and I would argue that you can extend that thought to the tracklist itself, each track feeling like it takes a prior album's concept and reiterates on it as effectively as possible. As a result, however, both Back to the Shack and Go Away end up being a little bit lesser than the rest of the album, pulling from some of the band's simpler output to make music that's moreso plain fun than it is outright gripping. Still, a pair of 8/10s is easy to look past on an album otherwise filled with nothing but 10s.

Highlight: Foolish Father

Lowpoint: Back to the Shack

2. Pinkerton (1996)

Make no mistake, Pinkerton is the undisputed favorite of the core Weezer fanbase, despite the lack of mainstream attention it typically gets. That may sound contradictory at first, but makes more sense when you realize what the album is; Pinkerton, to put it simply, is rough, vulnerable, unfiltered and dark. Compared to the polished sheen of their sound before and after, Pinkerton has a rawness to every part of it, from the guitars to the percussion to the vocals to the lyrics, all wailing with feelings of pent-up frustration and self-loathing. It's an album all about Rivers' conflicted state of mind in the mid-90s, becoming deluded and apathetic toward the world after becoming an overnight success.

It's easy to understand why people back in the 90s were apprehensive about this rough, unpolished sound, but it gives the entire record an earnestness that's hard not to emotionally connect to. This isn't an album that you would want to play in public, and covers various topics that may be deemed a bit taboo to express publically; most infamously, Rivers expresses a somewhat perverse affection for the author of a fan letter from Japan, desperate for any sort of human connection deeper than the flings he was surrounded by at the time. These unfiltered feelings are matched with a sound of raw guitars and occasional synths that stick in your head long after your first listen.

It can, in short, be difficult to listen to, and some songs like El Scorcho go a little bit too far in prioritizing a shaky mental state over being listenable. These moments are far outweighed by songs like The Good Life and Pink Triangle with infectious melodies and shredding guitars, and even songs without as much staying power melodically stick in your mind purely for the emotion they contain. Put another way, even though Pinkerton may at times lack in well-roundedness and lacks the manners you would expect from a band like Weezer, it makes up for it all in sheer pathos and emotional gravitas.

Highlight: Across the Sea

Lowpoint: El Scorcho

3. OK Human (2021)

Oh yeah; They've still got it.

Despite often being cited as being the most personal album the band has made since Pinkerton, the two albums couldn't be further from one another in sound. While Pinkerton's emotional core came from its rough, raw sound sounding as if it was on the verge of collapse at every beat, OK Human envelops itself in the warm, comforting sound of an orchestra, emphasizing cellos, strings and the piano far above the band's typical rock sound. There's not a single electric guitar here, and yet the songwriting and performance is still unmistakably Weezer - it's like if Vivaldi learned how to write a rock album, and works far better than it has any right to.

As mentioned, this sound is matched with a series of songs that dig far more into Rivers' personal state of mind than most albums released since Pinkerton; only now, the sensational insecurities of a newborn star are traded for the everyday woes that cross the adult mind across an average day. OK Human is an album that revels in the mundane – Aloo Gobi is about Rivers' daily routine of eating dinner with his wife, Grapes of Wrath is about his love of listening to audiobooks in the middle of the night, Playing My Piano is about the pure joys of making music – yet at each of these moments Rivers also expresses concern with the way his life is, so far into adulthood and having settled into such a mundane routine. Its sound is less so that of panic, and moreso of slowly bubbling concern, those feelings of worry that crop up late at night.

Its a remarkably relatable, comforting album, made all the more poignant by its lyrical ties to the pandemic lockdown, yet always still feels like a hopeful listen. Its an album of unspoken maturity, the kind that could only come from those who have been making music for as long as Weezer have, and exudes warmth and comfort in every song. Like a warm comforting hug, the orchestral sounds and beautiful flow from song to song make OK Human an album I feel obligated to listen to from front to back, helped by several songs having completely seamless transitions from one to the next. As a result, however, I feel that the album's songs only really work within a whole-album framework, with songs like Here Comes The Rain or Dead Roses being far less compelling when viewed out of the context they otherwise fit so beautifully within.

Highlight: Bird With a Broken Wing

Lowpoint: Here Comes The Rain

4. Maladroit (2002)

Maladroit is one of the band's more forgotten about albums, in part due to a somewhat botched release cycle that failed to generate much buzz. It was actually the last album I listened to for myself, and it took a while to really grow on me; there's a notable lack of personal investment in the lyrics and vocals, reflective of the more detached stance Rivers was taking in his songwriting at this time after Pinkerton's initial backlash. In an unusual twist for the band, however, it means that its the instruments that get to do the talking; Maladroit features some of Weezer's most guitar-heavy songs, with several sections of songs being purely instrumentally driven and guitar solos being aplenty.

While the album's core themes are hard to put a finger on, there's undoubtedly emotions and ~vibes~ that you can trace throughout; Slave, Slob, Take Control all give off the feeling of frustrated inadequacy, a wish to pull yourself out of whatever shitty situation you're in and find a happier way forward. These emotions are, again, mostly carried by the guitars, and as the album progresses its as if their harshness and misery is tuned out in favor of more emotionally varied, cheerful bends; the lovely closer December is downright sappy when compared to the borderline-obnoxious harshness on the opener American Gigolo.

What needs to be highlighted, though, is that regardless of substance, regardless of theme, and regardless of the harshness of guitars from track to track - more or less EVERY song in Maladroit is pleasant to listen to. Sometimes its heavier than typical Weezer, sometimes its sillier, and sometimes its something different entirely like Burndt Jamb or Death and Destruction, and yet every song puts a new kind of smile on my face from just how fun it is to listen to. Its a rock album that makes you understand how enjoyable rock music must be to just perform; without much concern for narrative, theme, grandness or scope, Maladroit plays in its own lane and does so to perfection.

Highlight: Burndt Jamb

Lowpoint: American Gigolo

5. Make Believe (2005)

Oh gosh, okay, uh - so if there's any album on this ranking that I might have to DEFEND putting this high up it'll be this one. Make Believe is pretty notable hated in some circles of Weezer discourse, in large part due to its godawful lead single and opening track. I won't go to bat for it; Beverly Hills deserves all the hate that it gets for being obnoxious, uninteresting, repetitive and one-note. Lots of this criticism can also be extended toward the midpoint track We Are All On Drugs - but I would argue that, for both of these tracks, their less-than-stellar quality actually works in the album's favor. Hear me out - I think Make Believe is an album that grows on you the more you listen to it.

Make Believe is ultimately an album about coming to terms with one's own weakness; though its no concept album, it very much has a sense of personal growth underlining each track. Beverly Hills is the very start of this growth, the point where our narrator - Rivers Cuomo - is saying, through an obnoxious boom-boom-clap chant, that he deserves to be larger than life and to live like a big-shot celebrity in Beverly Hills. As the album continues, however, it sees Rivers acknowledge that he isn't all that he cracks himself up to be, the rockstar persona he upholds falters as soon as he's directly confronted, and his attempts of playing himself up as cool and above criticism - shown directly in his attempt of relapsing back to that persona with We Are All On Drugs - hide the very small, vulnerable man that lies underneath.

Throughout all of its tracks, Make Believe can at times feel a little bit TOO dour, but not in the appealingly raw sense that Pinkerton embodied. There's a personal touch present, yet the album still aims to be listenable above all else, resulting in a sound that's mostly very heavy, melancholic and - to some - dull. I would however argue that this creates a genuinely really compelling atmosphere throughout the album - it does a great job of putting you in the troubled headspace Rivers was at in this point of his life, and makes the explosions in energy found in songs like My Best Friend hit all that much harder. Pardon Me is the centerpiece of the whole album, the song where push comes to shove, and shows just why the whole first half of emotional buildup was all worth it - in my opinion its one of the best songs the band has ever written, melodramatic as it may be.

Once the album comes to a close with Freak Me Out and Haunt You Everyday, its feeling has shifted entirely towards that of accepted weakness, of someone contently aware that they'll never be the hottest shit on earth, the earnest acknowledgement by Rivers that he is, in reality, a very small man deeply afraid of how he's perceived, yet trying to make the most of what he has. For my money, Make Believe is a really solid evolution of Pinkerton's ideas; an emotional record exploring a mental state of weakness, only with some edges sanded off and the mood dialed in more toward the depressive than the frustrated.

Highpoint: Pardon Me

Lowpoint: Beverly Hills

6. SZNZ: Autumn (2022)

Its a little odd to cover an individual part of SZNZ like this when they aren't full albums – each one generously sitting at 6 and a half tracks – yet it's that concise runtime that also serves as each part's greatest strength. With no time to spare, every single second counts far more than on the band's proper albums, with zero room for filler and zero room to stray from the conceptualized point. There's value to every part of SZNZ for the different, focused, direction each of them has, but Autumn is in my eyes the project at its absolute highest; a clear direction of cold, lonely yearning and self-reflection, paired with songs that jump between desires and pain, maintaining momentum without ever going quite as deep into the trenches as Pinkerton or OK Human.

Since Autumn is merely the third piece in a four-act play, it has less obligation to tell a cohesive journey in isolation; nevertheless, Run Raven Run gives the EP a fittingly eerie, lonely sendoff, althewhile the rest of the tracks are able to continue refining a blend of synth-driven, spacious, almost dance-like rock that feels both new and familiar. I would argue that this is, even with that tight focus, the most adventurous of the SZNZ parts; even with What Happens After You? taking that to be a bit too light on intensity for my particular taste, its hard to care when its chosen direction is such an outright banger, and when its surrounded by tracks like Get off On The Pain and Tastes Like Pain It's may not a deeply introspective album in the same way that OK Human was able to be, yet manages to capture the essence and energy of its subject matters, the feelings and vibes of pained yearning, well enough to where it feels like a damn near perfect distillation of everything emo-Weezer does right - concise, crisp, tightly-paced, and oh-so-well performed.

Highlight: Get Off On The Pain

Lowpoint: What Happens After You?

7. Weezer (2016)

I have comparatively very little to actually say about Weezer's self-titled summer album – the "White album" – as it's almost uninteresting in just how good it is. I'll also admit that I haven't listened to 2016's Weezer anywhere close to as many times as many of the band's other offerings, even ones that I'd rank below it, but that's because I don't know if there's much more I have left to discover through relistening to it. Weezer sought to make a summery, good-vibes rock record about enjoying the company of your friends, enjoying life even as an adult, and appreciating girls for being awesome, and did so with absolute aplomb; the sound is pitch-perfect, the songs are varied while still all sounding appropriately like Weezer, and the sun remains shining strong...though, if I may nitpick, not quite strongly enough

Yeah, its a weird point, but I do feel like the White album could have highlighted that summer-ness a bit more than they already do, given that it mostly just conveys the general idea of a good vibe more than it does specifically summer-beach fun. Still, it's hard to complain when songs like Wind in our Sail are as pleasant and fun as they are, and the album itself is just filled with energy around every corner. It's an album more or less JUST made up of good songs with no strings attached, which paradoxically makes it easy to recommend whilst also being hard to actually write anything substantial about – I had to really TRY to pick a lowpoint for the record and only landed on Jacked Up out of personal indifference toward it. The band's enjoying doing what they do best, and even if some songs aren't to my particular taste, there's a consistent vision present throughout 2016's Weezer that makes it hard to dislike even a little bit.

Highpoint: Wind in Our Sail

Lowpoint: Jacked Up

8. SZNZ: Summer (2022)

For the second part in the SZNZ story, Rivers' intention was to pursue a sound of "Youthful Indignation"; in other words, its when the summery optimism from the previous record turns to discontent and anger. As a result, every song on Summer has a loud, echoing largeness to it, like shouts of dissatisfaction into the void of uncertainty. And that can admittedly be a bit much at times - without so much as a moment to breathe, Summer is loud, echoing, and at times rebellious; songs like The Opposite Of Me embody that feeling of being completely fed up with the way things are and running at full speed toward the future, and its hard not to shout along every time the chorus hits. What the record lacks in variety, it makes up in spades in consistency, energy and surprising emotional core on songs like Cuomoville; there's hardly a miss in its tight runtime.

Admittedly, I've always found Records to be a bit of an odd inclusion; despite its instrumental, its songwriting feels tailor-made for a pop album, which feels rather out of place on the one part of SZNZ that's otherwise free from pop sugarness. Still, that instrumental rework is damn well done if my theory is correct, and by the time the positively anthemic closer Thank You And Goodnight hits its hard to remember any faults the record might've had in its prior tracks.

Highlight: The Opposite Of Me

Lowpoint: Records

9. Weezer (2008)

The band's third self-titled album from 2008, Weezer – the "Red album" – is perhaps the most divisive release in the band's discography, but is one I've grown a lot of fondness for. It's to date one of the most experimental albums the band has made, featuring songs written and performed by all the other members of the band, alongside efforts like Angel and the One that feel out-of-this-world for the band to pursue – and even with the genuine duds that are still here, the hits land far too hard for me not to commend.

Uncommon for the band's self-titled albums, it feels like there's also a loose narrative present throughout this one, which I also find to be quite neat. Lead single Troublemaker is all about introducing Rivers as the wild and weird off-kilter guy that he is, but as the album progresses we see him begin to dream and think about the many other ways that he could have turned out, what else matters to him other than being a rebellious rock star. It feels fittingly reflective for the band at this stage in the band; with 1994's Weezer introducing the band, 2001's Weezer recovering the band, 2008's Weezer is allowed to reflect on the band, now that its stability was safely assured. A notable example of this is the prior mentioned songs that the band's other members wrote and performed, which all play in sequence after the album-highlight Dreamin' – without spelling it all out, it sort of gives the impression of Rivers hearing the voices of what kind of person he's become and could be as he floats in his dream, each desperate thought manifested as a different member of his own band. Its, again, experimental for the band at this stage, and I quite like the effect it all gives off.

That experimental goodness is the main thing that draws me to the Red album...which makes it a shame that the success rate on those experiments is nevertheless so mixed. Heart Songs and Cold Dark World are both neat ideas that just don't work very well as listenable songs in execution, while Everybody Get Dangerous sort of suffers from the opposite problem; playing it so safe as a countermeasure yet over-correcting into becoming another repetitive and obnoxious song like Beverly Hills. The actual topic that Heart Songs is about is genuinely really sweet, and I'd argue its acoustic sound helps punctuate that drifting-into-a-dream narrative that the album is going for – Cold Dark World, meanwhile, is too bad of a song to warrant defending that same way.

With these blemishes being dangerously close to making up a whole third of the album, it kind of surprises even me how much I still love it all when taken on the whole. It swings for the fences (at least, the fences that Weezer itself set up), and even its misses feel like they fully commit to whatever dumb idea they set out to do, helplessly endearing along the way. It also helps that almost all of the tracks found on the extended Deluxe edition – The Spider, Pig and King – are top-tier experimental Weezer, showing just how ace the record could have been with just one more recut of the setlist. As is, 2008's Weezer is as endearingly inconsistent as the band its named after, and my attachment to those good songs found on here make it so that its position on this ranking fluctuates on a near daily basis.

Highlight: Dreamin'

Lowpoint: Cold Dark World

10. Weezer (1994)

Sure enough – it's the one record from the band that EVERYONE knows, their self-titled debut, the "Blue album", Weezer of 1994. It's rare for a band to be THIS much on the ball with their first-ever record, but Rivers' perfectionism paired with the youthful energy found only in teenagers just wanting to make cool music resulted in a record with both polish and energy that's hard for any band – let alone Weezer themselves – to replicate. To many, that classic, pure sound is strong enough to put the Blue album at the top of their own rankings, but I find it to be just a little bit too humble to really push the envelope the way that higher-ranked albums do.

That isn't to say that the Blue album lacks heart or punch – Say It Aint So is a wonderful tune – but what's both the record's biggest strength and weakness is that it never lingers on one concept for too long. Right after the aforementioned song's tragic sound has just set in, you get songs like Surf Wax America or Holiday, all about just having fun with your pals. It's a remarkably solid record as a result, paced like a dream and never feeling necessarily scattershot due to the similar sound it all has, but to me never feels like it particularly shoots for the stars; its nostalgic, comforting and classic, but is still very much from a band at the very beginning of their career still needing to introduce themselves, many songs feeling like early versions of what they could have been with but a little more experience. I think that spryness is best felt on tracks like Undone - The Sweater Song and Only In Dreams, which are both comparatively experimental for the rest of the record, yet in my opinion, fail to really stick as truly pleasant listens.

Still, there is a third example of a more experimental song found on the Blue album, and is the one you all know; Buddy Holly's lighthearted synthy sound is unlike anything else on the record and, really, unlike most of what the band has put out since, and it's hard not to see why it became such an enduring classic. Music video aside, it's just an incredibly likable, dorky, fun tune; and really, its that likability that sits as the Blue album's biggest strength. No matter who you may be, 1994's Weezer sells itself immediately through just how evidently earnest and wide-eyed its every song is, with even the more misguided experiments being hard to avoid nodding along with a smile. Though I may prefer lots of what the band would later achieve, it's hard not to appreciate just how damn refined the Blue album all still manages to be all these years later.

Highlight: Holiday

Lowpoint: Undone

11. SZNZ: Winter (2022)

After three months of conflict rising and falling, the SZNZ Project comes to end not with a bang or a triumph, but with a slower, more relaxed record, allowing things to settle like snow in the fields. While Spring reveled in bliss, Summer shouted in discontent and Autumn wailed in misery, Winter lowers the stakes and lowers the drama, feeling like a much more low-key, personal, acoustic project than any of the parts before. It is, as a result, the one part I often forget about when taken on the whole, yet simultaneously one filled with songs that really manage to hit the spot on a closer listen.

I've seen Winter rank particularly highly for people who are die-hard fans of the original 1994 Weezer, the Blue album; and I do feel like this is the closest the band has gotten to matching that album's sound to date. Opener I Want a Dog is emotionally earnest, raw, and innocent, the human desire of companionship expressed so plainly and bluntly after three EPs of drama and exaggeration; in scaling things back, it manages to make it all hit harder, althewhile vaguely bringing the mind back to the aforemention Blue album's My Name Is Jonas in sound. There are ways in which I find this scaled-back approach to detract from the record; Iambic Pentameter feels like the definition of an intermediary, inbetween-song, which an EP of just 7 songs doesn't really have room to play around with, and midpoint song Sheraton Commander feels similarly written to connect pieces of the record together without also managing to be a fun listen on its own right.

That leaves the record with just 5 songs to impress with, but I do genuinely think those 5 stick the landing just right to send SZNZs off right; closer The Deep and Dreamless Sleep is all I could have ever wanted from the Blue album's Only in Dreams, and the buildup toward it with two equally excellent tracks makes the whole EP – and, even moreso, the whole SZNZs project – feel absolutely worth all the mishaps it may have involved. While one part of me wishes that SZNZs could have ended just as dramatically as it began and continued, another understands that this more emotionally earnest, down-to-earth sound is what defines Winter as part of the whole. For how well it wraps things up, a warm blanket in the winter coldness is all I could realistically ever have asked for.

Highlight: I Want a Dog

Lowpoint: Sheraton Commander

12. Pacific Daydream (2017)

All things considered, I feel like Pacific Daydream may well make the worst first impression of any album the band's yet to put out. Do any digging on its conceptualization and it feels almost cynical – made up of songs discarded from the 2019 self-titled "Black" album, Weezer, which itself was already heading in a worryingly poppy direction. It is, then, a rock band diving true head-first into radio pop right after their perceived comeback with 2016's self-titled album, Weezer, done through an album of pop-album rejects. Worse yet, right as you think the band proves your gut reaction wrong on the album's opener, the pair of tracks that immediately follow feel like they were tailor-made to be a slap in the face to fans of the band's actual work, so completely bare on guitar, attitude, bite, subversion or earnest passion for the songwriting. It is then, evidently, a difficult album to like; but trudge past that awful first impression, and I think Pacific Daydream does reward you with something truly special.

I won't mince words, though; Feels Like Summer is an absolutely god-awful track, the most generic of generic pop songs you could think of, and blows any good will that Mexican Fender may have given the album through its introduction. Yet even in this early rough spot, there are good attributes worth pointing out; mainly, that even moreso than the aforementioned White album, Pacific Daydream does manage to feel properly summery throughout, with a sort of dreamy production style paired with an emphasis of summer fun and longing for the good times in its lyrics and songwriting. Feels Like Summer may be grating, generic and awful, but it sets out to do exactly what its title promises; 3 tracks into the album, it DOES indeed feel like summer.

This vibe isn't solely why I hold the album higher up in my ranking, though; with the songs immediately following Feels Like Summer, things do genuinely start to pick up for Pacific Daydream. Particularly at the midpoint of the album, the fifth song Weekend Woman, things reach a beautiful emotional climax; this is still one of my favorite songs the band has ever written, and its vibe being all about earnest longing fits the album's dreamy production style like an absolute glove; and just ust after that, QB Blitz and Sweet Mary continue to be absolutely fantastic songs in a similar vein. If you count the song preceding Weekend Woman, Happy Hour – a somewhat-generic song similar to Feels Like Summer but with a lot more likable songwriting and vibes – songs 4 through 7 on Pacific Daydream basically feel like they could be a top-tier EP for the band all on their own. For my money, it may well be the most consistent streak of hits-in-a-row found on any Weezer album, and well warrants the existence of the album on their own; it's as if the band only realized they were making an actual album partway through recording.

Even if the songs after Sweet Mary fail to live up to that four-song streak, the pleasant summer atmosphere permeates, and after a while you come to just accept that this is just what the record sounds like. There's nothing remaining in the album's closing third that's nearly as obnoxious as those second and third songs, and after a while even those songs become utterly tolerable once you know the beauty that lies ahead. With repeated relistens throughout the past summer, Pacific Daydream has absolutely grown on me, featuring both the absolute best and absolute worst of Weezer's pop offerings but unifying them all under a summery overcast as to not make the record necessarily feel uneven. It'll never be a record I can wholly LOVE, but its an easy recommendation for those who just want some pleasant earworms; go into it with tempered expectations, and Weekend Woman may well catch you just as off guard as it did me that one sunny day.

Highlight: Weekend Woman

Lowpoint: Feels Like Summer

13. SZNZ: Spring (2022)

Though it applies to all of the SZNZs EPs, it feels particularly wrong to review Spring as a standalone. As Part 1 of a 4-part epic, this is basically a story without a conflict, a film cut short before things go awry - a paradise without any trouble. What that equates to in music terms is that Spring is a record that's almost sickeningly sweet, filled with sounds of nature, chants of glee, and songwriting almost entirely about just enjoying life in paradise. Still, that approach is paired with a sound very much inspired by my beloved OK Human, and the sheer amount of joyousness the record contains is sometimes exactly what you need after a hard day of work.

When the SZNZ project was conceptualized, Rivers noted that the idea for Spring's sound would be a mixture of OK Human and the laid-back Island in the Sun. With those inspirations in mind, I was surprised to find there is still a notable amount of electric guitar and pounding, clear drums underlying almost every song here; as a result, a song like Angels on Vacation is still mostly a fun, pleasant ride, yet gets to be carried along by a constantly present, easy-to-hum, but nevertheless harsh and crisp electric guitar riff. When first noticing this surprising guitar presence on my relisten, I was initially concerned that it would lead to an unnatural contrast, but they're balanced just right throughout the record and, in a sense, help give the impression of a building dread in the lead-up to the laser SZNZs part. It does, however, prevent the album from really reaching that outright-zen chillness of Island in the Sun or some of the band's more pop-adjacent songs, but that's a price I'm well willing to pay for the sake of having more guitars present.

The focus on nature's pleasantries throughout the record does need to be re-emphasized, as songs like The Garden of Eden are helped immensely by the addition of environmental foliage, chimes and subtly-echoing backing vocals, giving the entire record the feeling of walking through nature in the beginning of spring. Which, in other words, means Spring - perhaps better than any other individual part of the project - succeeds beautifully at capturing the feeling of the season its themed around. The problem, again, is that its sheer sweetness can at times be a bit overbearing; there isn't much in the way of variety in emotion or sound, and on a song like The Sound Of Drums I find that the sheer amount of happiness borders on sounding more like something you'd hear in a childens show than from a rock band of any kind. Perhaps that's the cynic in me showing more than it should - if you're just looking for the most pleasant, sugary-sweet Weezer sound out there, Spring should absolutely be on your radar.

Highlight: Angels On Vacation

Lowpoint: The Sound Of Drums

14. Weezer (2019)

Oh, geez...so, uh, if the "Red album" (2008 self-titled, Weezer) was the was the band trying to experiment what's possible within their established rock sound, then the "Black album", 2019's Weezer, is the band acting as if there's not even a core sound to adhere to. The record was conceived as the direct opposite to the 2016 self-titled record of the inverse color – wheras that record sought to convey good vibes through the otherwise darker sound of alt-rock, this record instead seeks to convey darker, more ominous vibes by using the otherwise pleasing sounds of contemporary pop. It's a cool – if outlandish – idea in theory, but the album has such a poor grasp on how to approach the concept in practice that it ends up feeling like a disjointed mess. The Black album is, by a landslide, the most inconsistent album in the band's entire discography, providing a bizarre mix of pop, trap beats, soft rock, lounge music and acoustics, and far too little of it actually invokes the thought-providing darkness that conceptualized the project.

Nevertheless, I did call it a inconsistent for a reason, and that's because there are some damn high highs on here. High as a Kite achieves the concept the album is shooting for absolutely pitch-perfectly, balancing an Island in the Sun-esque cozy jam with a more dramatic tone and a prevailing undercurrent of danger and dread, heightened by the song's lyrics being about going on drugs to escape from the very real problems surrounding you in life. The experimental direction of the record also results in some unexpected hits like Too Many Thoughts In My Head, which explores the idea of complete neural overstimulation through a positively cacophonic soundscape, a song that sounds like it's fighting itself in a way that somehow works out for the better. Sadly, though, the "experimental" direction far too often sees the band instead fall into something that feels insultingly safe and uninteresting; Living in L.A. sounds only a slight bit more dark than the average radio hit, and Piece of Cake is simple and underdeveloped to the point of being insulting. Even when songs come with incredibly strong songwriting, such as I’m Just Being Honest – my favorite of the songs written for Rivers’ Japanese side project “Scott & Rivers” – they’re let down by underwhelming pop-driven instrumentation that largely fails to make a case for why it should be preferred to Weezer’s typical alt-rock sound.

The Black album is weird in that sense, ping-ponging between feeling entirely too safe and underdeveloped, and being absolutely ludicrously out-there in sound. It only occasionally finds that sweet middle ground inbetween that you could call a pleasant listen, and yet more rarely (again, High as a Kite) actually achieves what the album set out to do. The only other track that you could say comes close to said concept would be the absolutely outrageous closer, California Snow, driven by the first – and only – trap beat in the band’s entire career and vocals of Rivers comparing his fame and subsequent misery to that of Jesus Christ. There’s a lot of religious undertones throughout the record, to be fair; as much as I love to dissect and understand Weezer’s albums for the narratives they may hold, this release may be the only one where I feel outright intimidated at the idea of dissecting it further.

I suppose that’s...sort of what keeps me from rating 2019's Weezer lower than where it currently is. Even with the undeniably cheap and plain-sounding pop songs littered throughout, even with the disappointing inability to achieve an otherwise cool inverse-twist on Weezer’s sound, there’s so much still left to chew on from the gems that the project did produce.

Highlight: High as a Kite

Lowpoint: Piece of Cake

15. Van Weezer (2021)

To me, there's something about Van Weezer that's feels...rushed, like it should have been thought through more before its release. The concept is pretty simple - it's an album designed to be toured and as a result embodies some heavier, grander stadium-y rock akin to the the rock legends of old that helped inspire the band to begin with. I can see the vision just on that front alone; but while some areas of the record feel like they achieve that goal and even go beyond that to say something more meaningful, others feel pitifully half-baked and poorly thought through, culminating in a record that I really don't know what to think about on the whole.

On the one hand, you get songs like The End of the Game and Beginning of the End that capture that huge sound they were shooting for perfectly. The latter of the two, along with fellow banger 1 More Hit, are the parts that I would say reach even further than what the album originally sought out to achieve - their lyrics feel as if they're commenting on Rivers' current state of mind as a rockstar for almost 30 years, about what its like to continue the need to face the expectations of a huge audience and write songs in part to satisfy their needs. The album, in that sense, begins to almost feel like the flip-side to OK Human; while that record took an introspective look into Rivers' day-to-day mundanity with a subdued, soft sound, these parts of Van Weezer feel like they're pairing that sought-after explosive sound with themes of what it means for Rivers to be a rock star.

These questions aren't exactly *abscent* from other, small parts of the album, but feel as if they were hardly a focus for the rest of the record. Even in judging the remaining songs here on the virtue of being sufficiently large enough for a tour, what remains is a mixture of feeling half-hearted or downright weak. All The Good Ones is vapid and repetitive, I Need Some Of That is an arguably-worse rework/reusal of a song from one of Rivers' side projects, I'm not particularly fond of the melody on Sheila Can Do It... Perhaps most bafflingly of all, however, is Blue Dream, which takes an old demo from the EWBAITE-years that's beloved by the core community of fans and downright butchers it through replacing its guitar melody with that of Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train. The resulting song, as expected, barely has any of its own identity left, and continues to reinforce the feeling that Van Weezer just really didn't know what it wanted to do.

Though Blue Dream upsets me the most, I think the album's closing track is an equally baffling choice; an entirely-acoustic ditty the likes of which only previously seen on Pinkerton and 2008's self-titled record. On those records, though, I would argue that their inclusion even amidst a tight 10-track run served to amplify the emotions of the narrative each were conveying; on Van Weezer, meanwhile, there's basically no narrative TO amplify, and it only really results in one of those 10 precious song slots on the made-for-touring album basically going to waste.

Even with all of these qualms, I can't bring myself to say that I don't like Van Weezer; I could gush on and on about the love I hold for its strong tracks in particular, and Beginning of the End in particular is probably a top 5 Weezer song for me. But those songs really deserve to be part of a greater project than this; one that, in the end, can't be called much else than confused and misguided.

Highlight: Beginning of the End

Lowpoint: Blue Dream

16. Weezer (2019)

Of all of Weezer's records, this - the band's 2019 self-titled covers album, the "Teal album" - is the one I tend to see the most outright dislike for. Which might surprise some of you, as its certainly not the most NOTORIOUSLY bad album in their discography; yet for a lot of core fans, those albums can be worth examining for just how they went wrong, just what the intended direction was, and for some there's even something to love hidden underneath the vitriol. With this record, however, what I described in the first sentence is exactly what you get; 2019's Weezer is a Weezer album with covers, and the covers aren't particularly inspired.

Based on a viral Twitter "campaign" for the band to cover Toto's Africa, the band instead delivered with the surprise release of an entire record's worth of covers, almost all of songs of a similar "80s nostalgia" variety. I saw a user online describe the album as "Weezer Karaoke", which really does hit the nail on the head; the issue here, regardless of the quality of the band's performances on these covers, is that they really don't do much of anything to actually reinvent or reimagine the source material. As such, the quality of a cover depends almost entirely on if Rivers' gentle, soft-spoken singing voice lends itself well to whichever song is featured. That means that songs like the one that kicked off the entire project, Toto's Africa, and Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule The World, work absolutely wonderfully (the latter is my personal favorite and I would argue even surpasses the original!), wheras more harsh songs like Black Sabbath's Paranoid just flat-out don't work.

There's basically no more room for analysis here; the Teal album does exactly what it seeks out to do, which is just as shallow a venture as it says on the tin. If the prospect of hearing some fun 80s songs sung by Rivers Cuomo doesn't excite you, then the record itself won't. Nevertheless, the guy's voice is indeed a huge part of the band's appeal for me, and the batting average for the covers on here is fine enough to where I can enjoy the record as a casual listen.

Highlight: Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Tears for Fears)

Lowpoint: Paranoid (Black Sabbath)

17. Hurley (2010)

Y'know...It's hard to HATE Hurley because you can tell if nothing else that Rivers and company had some fun making it. As is probably evident by its absurd cover artwork and name, the album lacks entirely in any sort of coherent theme or messaging; its only theme is to find new ways to rock out whilst still somewhat sounding like Weezer. You get some of Rivers' weirdest, out-there vocal performances, tunes a fair bit out of the group's comfort zone due to the influence of outside songwriters, yet never strays into full-on pop music. The best comparison I could make would be to Maladroit, but unlike that album, Hurley lacks that consistent, dead-on sound that made that into such a classic album, feeling more like a fun sidetrack than a must-listen for the band.

That variety in songwriting is simultaneously the album's biggest strength and weakness. On Ruling Me, we get a song that's fast, huge and catchy in a way that feels simultaneously familiar and unlike anything the band could ever make on its own; Where's My Sex, meanwhile, is somehow even more juvenile than its title suggests, althewhile playing itself up as an obnoxious loud stadium rock anthem. Even if the quality of the record is better than what preceded it, and even with an on-average heavier sound, Hurley still feels like it just refuses to take itself seriously, with songs like Smart Girls being based on random pieces from Rivers' twitter account rather than having anything of worth to say - which stings especially given that the album's opener, Memories, does feel shockingly reflective and earnest from a band that had otherwise spent the last couple of years reveling in their outrageousness. Its the closest Hurley gets to having a coherent theme – of acknowledging how much time has passed and facing it with a tongue-in-cheek smile – yet not much of note is said about that theme past that point aside from a continued commitment for songs to still be allowed to be conceptually silly if juvenile.

When viewing the album's tracks in isolation, there's probably more hits on Hurley overall than some of the albums ranked above it...yet it's unable to really come together into a cohesive listening experience, as something that really sticks with you. In a sense, its *less* than the sum of its parts, and is probably the Weezer record I forget the most about as a result despite having some of the band's more out-there songs.

Highlight: Memories

Lowpoint: Smart Girls

18. Death To False Metal (2010)

Yeah, so, I'm including out of obligation, just in case anyone asks about it in the future because it is in some sense still an album; just not a conventional one. None of the material on here is technically new, as its a collection of demos and songs previously rejected from inclusion on albums, re-recorded and compiled into a standalone release. It sounds kind of cool as an idea at first, but Rivers Cuomo is one of the most open people in the music industry with his unfinished/unused work; the "Alone" series of releases from the band's website contain gigabytes upon gigabytes of test tracks, riffs, incomplete demoes and more spanning the band's entire history. By comparison, DTFM feels like very slim pickings at just 9 tracks and a cover, not even using tons of the band's more revered lost tracks, and with the selection offered feeling more random than an attempt to be a unified experience or exploration of the band's history.

There's not much to say about how the album works as a cohesive experience as a result; unless I'm missing something and Rivers actually plotted this release out as meticulously as his other albums, this is just 10 disjointed reject-tracks put on the same disc and recorded with a somewhat-similar sound. There are songs here which fail to make an impression at all and make it very clear why they were rejected – Everyone in particular is absurdly mind-numbing along the same lines as Beverly Hills or Everybody Get Dangerous – but then other songs like Blowin' My Stack are sufficiently charming and could've absolutely fit right in on something like Maladroit if given some tweaks.

I wouldn't recommend listening through it as an album more than once, but check out some of its highlights – the cover, Unbreak My Heart, is one of the best covers the band has ever done! – and maybe add them to a playlist; there's more good here than I initially thought.

Highlight: Unbreak My Heart

Lowpoint: Everyone

19. Weezer (2001)

Having now read this far down in the ranking, if there's one thing you've probably noticed, it's that I really love it when Weezer's albums (and albums in general) feel like they have some sort of overarching purpose – a message, a theme, a sound, a story, simply put, when it feels like I can connect with the people behind the music. But for their second self-titled album, the "Green album", none of this was ever in the cards; Rivers Cuomo, after feeling humiliated by how his earnestness on Pinkerton was received, proudly declared before release that 2001's Weezer would be stripping things way back. No message, no point, and no emotion; ensuring as safe a landing as possible for the band's re-entry into the mainstream. Thus, we received the band at their safest, blandest, and most boring in their shortest-ever full record.

It's easy to commend Rivers and the band, in a sense, for fulfilling exactly what they set out to do with the Green album, and in some sense exactly what they NEEDED to do in order to get back in the public eye. It took only a year after this album released for the band to get right back to doing more interesting, inventive songwriting on Maladroit, and only one record thereafter we'd get Make Believe, which finally felt like the band had found a balance between being emotional earnest whilst also bolstering mainstream-friendly catchy songwriting. Things all worked out in the longterm, but it left 2001's Weezer feeling like little more than a 28-minute long stop-gap. Rivers Cuomo's songwriting is calculated and precise, and this record shows the exact fault with that process; with two notable exceptions, every song featured on here sounds homogenized, bland and uninteresting.

Those two tracks, Hash Pipe and Island in the Sun, are the ones you've likely heard from the album beforehand, with the latter in particular blowing up in popularity on Spotify. I have mixed feelings on both but can absolutely commend them for showing glimpses of life in an otherwise lifeless record - Island in the Sun may well be overplayed, but it is a genuinely quite nice little jam, and while Hash Pipe's abrasive attitude doesn't really work for me, I again commend it for at least HAVING that attitude to begin with.

There are some brief, brief glimpses of life throughout the Green album past just those two – I'm particularly drawn to closer O Girlfriend having a genuinely sentimental feel to its melody – but even it, alongside all of the remaining 8 tracks, suffer from production and sound that feels almost deliberately muted and sandpapered, as to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. You can hear O Girlfriend's attempt to be emotional and powerful, and yet its guitars, bass, percussion and vocals feel held back, equalized to the most boring default settings possible, as to not dare to evoke too much of a reaction out of its listeners – as to keep 2001's Weezer in line with the idea of what Weezer in 2001 ought to be.

I don't want to come off as TOO harsh toward the record, as I understand that its easy digestibility is specifically why it still has some devout fans. In particular, I've heard it described as the perfect record to put on in the car sound system on a summer day, and as someone who really enjoys Pacific Daydream for similar reasons I very much acknowledge the sentiment as valid. But that insistence on vapidness, that sound that feels almost afraid to be a rock album, is something I can't let go - the Green album may well have been what the band needed to make, but it simply can't escape feeling thoroughly hollow as a result.

Highlight: Island in the Sun

Lowpoint: All 7 songs not mentioned above

20. Raditude (2009)

Look everyone! It's the bad one!

Okay, in all seriousness; Raditude is an album I avoided for months just due to how catastrophically bad its reputation is. This was Weezer trying to dive into a more mainstream pop sound which was, in turn, disastrous. To date you'll still find people calling other bands' bad albums "their Raditude" in reference to just how vitriolic the hate for the record was. And really, the vibes it gives off alone are just downright juvenile, from the name to the cover to the outside songwriters to the very idea of Rivers dropping guitar duties to act solely as a vocalist frontman. But having now actually listened to it, I will say...its not AS bad as you might think.

Compared to Weezer's later pop outings, I was initially surprised to hear just how much electric guitar there even is on here. It may be a bit sandpapered, produced in a far more sanitized, dance-y manner, but a song like I'm Your Daddy does sound like there's a bona fide Weezer classic hiding underneath the juvenile vibes. Indeed, I wouldn't say Raditude is a sonic trainwreck, and if the intent was to just produce something that's dumb fun to listen to, the aforementioned song and the opener, (If You’re Wondering If I Want You to) I Want You To, do somewhat succeed at that mission statement pretty well.

The problem, however, is one that Raditude suffers from almost uniquely (save maybe from Cold Dark World off of the Red album); there are songs on here that are outright detestable. Can't Stop Partying is the obvious example here, a hollow, baffling, obnoxious party jam that grates to listen to, with a guest feature from rapper Lil Wayne attempting to present the band as nothing but party-loving goons. Even past that point, though, you get songs like That Girl Got Hot, that just sound...completely disinterested in being actually fun listens. At far too many points throughout Raditude, you feel the radio-inoffensiveness ethos of a song like Make Believe's Beverly Hills employed en masse, whilst lacking any of the narrative purpose you could argue said track had.

Even if the point with Raditude was to just make a record of 10 fun danceable songs (obnoxious as those results may be), the record outright fails at maintaining that identity. Everybody talks about Can't Stop Partying's awfulness, but it if nothing else fits the bill that Raditude is presenting perfectly; Love Is The Answer, meanwhile, is a slow, melodramatic ballad with Indian influences that completely screeches whatever attempt at energy the album wants to convey to a halt. As with Hurley released a year later, this album featured contributing songwriters outside of the band, and I would probably attribute the overall lack of focus and earnest vision throughout the record to this (even if Love Is The Answer was, bafflingly, always a Cuomo original). Even if its mostly to negative effects holistically, the outside songwriting process did result in Put Me Back Together; a song that, again, feels completely unfitting for the energy Raditude wants to give off, but is a genuinely well-put together (heh) song that I was shocked to find buried between the obnoxious radio hits. Like with I'm Your Daddy, a re-recording and rewrite of the lyrics could have made it into an all-time classic Weezer song, or at least something fit for an appearance for a sentimental moment in a kids film.

That's really the overall crux of Raditude; its mismanaged, misguided and so thoroughly unlikable that even its glimpses of quality end up feeling tainted and wrong (for gods sake, one of the best songs on here is called I'm Your Daddy). Like with the Red album released the year prior, there are moments where I would consider ranking the album higher just for those few moments of quality songwriting found here, but the sheer amount of irredeemable slop its all tied to hinders it from ever breaking out of the bottom 3 for me.

Highlight: Put Me Back Together

Lowpoint: Can't Stop Partying

That's my ranking - 1 through 20!

In short:

Everything Will Be Alright In The End (2014)

Pinkerton (1996)

OK Human (2021)

Maladroit (2002)

Make Believe (2005)

SZNZ: Autumn (2022)

Weezer (2016)

SZNZ: Summer (2022)

Weezer (2008)

Weezer (1994)

SZNZ: Winter (2022)

Pacific Daydream (2017)

SZNZ: Spring (2022)

Weezer (2019)

Van Weezer (2021)

Weezer (2019)

Hurley (2010)

Death to False Metal (2010)

Weezer (2001)

Raditude (2009)

If you're a fan of the band, I hope this list has given some sort of insight into albums you may otherwise not have had – and if you're new to Weezer altogether, I hope this post can serve as a solid point of reference to learning more about what each album and the band itself is about!

If you have any personal favorites or objections you would like to raise, please feel free to share them, I'd love to hear what you think and will of course edit the post to correct any possible misinfo it will contain. I'll also be editing it whenever my own opinion changes; I want this list to stay up-to-date with my own feelings on the band!!