Weezer

In 1994, while rock was dominated by the angst and the tough pose of grunge, along came a band that did exactly the opposite of cool.

Four guys in glasses and sweaters, singing about being shy, awkward and in love with someone who did not love them back.

Weezer did not pretend to be dangerous or tormented. It pretended to be what it was: a bunch of nerds. And in that slightly ridiculous honesty lay their magic.

The Blue Album

The band formed in Los Angeles in 1992, around Rivers Cuomo, a brilliant, odd, socially awkward guy who would at some point go off to study at Harvard.

None of them looked like a rock star. They were the kids who shut themselves in the garage to play along with their favourite records.

Their first album, known as the Blue Album, produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars, was a huge success, driven by brilliant videos: "Buddy Holly", with that unforgettable Spike Jonze clip that dropped them digitally into an old television series; "Undone (The Sweater Song)"; "Say It Ain't So".

It was power pop, or "geek rock", as people called it: songs about sweaters, about shyness, about teenage heartbreak, instead of the darkness everyone else was dealing in.

Inside Windows 95

And there is one detail that sums up, better than any other, what this band was.

The video for "Buddy Holly" came loaded inside the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM, in a folder called "Fun Stuff", as a demonstration that computers could now play video.

The nerd band, handed out by the million inside the nerdiest operating system in history.

Microsoft had licensed it directly with the label, without consulting them at all. Weezer were annoyed at first, until it dawned on them that it had been a blessing.

Their drummer, Pat Wilson, put it like this years later: "Can you imagine that happening today? It's like, there's one video on YouTube, and it's your video."

A whole generation found out their new computer could show video thanks to a Weezer song.

And for millions of odd kids, geeks, outcasts, that band who sang from awkwardness and not from rage changed their lives: at last somebody was saying out loud what they felt.

The album that humiliated him

But the most interesting Weezer story is the one about their second album, and it is one of those that is worth an entire profile.

After the success, Cuomo felt crushed by fame. He went off to Harvard, turned into something of a hermit, and went through a painful surgery to lengthen his left leg, which was shorter than the other.

From the bottom of that pit he wrote "Pinkerton", in 1996. It was a raw, abrasive, painfully honest record: it talked about loneliness, uncomfortable desire, disillusionment, his own squalid corners, with none of the protection of irony.

He exposed himself completely. And the world punished him for it.

"Pinkerton" barely reached number nineteen and sold forty-seven thousand copies in its first week. The critics tore it apart, and Rolling Stone readers voted it the third worst album of 1996.

Cuomo was so hurt, so ashamed of having shown himself that way and of being rejected for it, that he went as far as calling it a mistake, and he withdrew for years.

When time proved him right

And then the thing that sometimes happens to work too sincere for its moment happened.

Over the following two decades, "Pinkerton" was completely reassessed, until it became one of the most loved and admired records of the nineties, and a founding influence on emo: that whole genre of confessional, emotional rock that came afterwards owes it something. It only went platinum in 2016.

The album that humiliated Cuomo turned into his most beloved and most influential work.

The lesson has something of poetic justice about it: the very thing he had been crucified for, showing himself with no defences, turned out to be the bravest and most valuable thing he did.

The other side

After that, Weezer came back and became a long-lived, prolific band, with highs and lows.

Their return, in 2001, with the so-called Green Album, was the exact other side of "Pinkerton": where there had once been wound and abrasion, now there was sunshine.

Out of it came "Island in the Sun", one of the best loved songs of their whole career and perhaps their biggest hit outside the United States: a bright, relaxed postcard about running away to an island and never feeling bad again. It had two videos, and the one that stuck in the memory is, once again, the Spike Jonze one, with the band playing with wild animals on a hillside.

It is the song of summer, of rest, of catching your breath. The sound of a group that had hit rock bottom and was finally coming out into the light.

And it carried on: enormous hits and oddities — from "Beverly Hills" to a cover of Toto's "Africa" that went viral — always with Cuomo's idiosyncratic personality out front. They have sold tens of millions of records, and they are still there.

The nerds won

They should be remembered for what they gave to the ones who did not fit: first an anthem, and then something harder and braver.

With the Blue Album they told the odd kids they were not alone. With "Pinkerton" they showed them that exposing the wound, even if you are humiliated for it, can be the most powerful thing an artist does.

Put on "Buddy Holly", "Say It Ain't So" or "El Scorcho", and you will hear the sound of every kid who ever felt out of place discovering there was a band for them.

The nerds won. And an album that once served to mock Rivers Cuomo ended up being the blueprint of a whole generation's feelings.

Sources

Weezer, American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1992; their stable line-up since 2001 is Rivers Cuomo (vocals, guitar), Patrick Wilson (drums), Brian Bell (guitar) and Scott Shriner (bass); Matt Sharp was the original bassist. Their self-titled debut album (the "Blue Album", 1994), produced by Ric Ocasek, was a multi-platinum success, with the singles "Undone – The Sweater Song", "Buddy Holly" (with a celebrated Spike Jonze video) and "Say It Ain't So"; their style was labelled power pop or "geek rock". The "Buddy Holly" video was included on the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM, in the "Fun Stuff" folder, as a demonstration of the system's multimedia capabilities; Microsoft licensed the material through the label, Geffen, without consulting the band, who were initially annoyed and later valued the exposure they gained. Drummer Pat Wilson commented on it this way in an oral history published by Magnet in 2014: "Can you imagine that happening today? It's like, there's one video on YouTube, and it's your video". Their second album, "Pinkerton" (1996), self-produced and confessional in tone, written by Cuomo partly during his time at Harvard University and after surgery to lengthen his left leg (April 1995), was a commercial and critical failure: it reached number 19 with around 47,000 copies in its first week and Rolling Stone readers voted it the third worst album of the year. Years later it was reassessed as one of the best albums of the nineties, certified platinum by the RIAA in 2016, and recognised as a founding influence on emo. Their third album, the "Green Album" (2001, also produced by Ric Ocasek), marked their return and included "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun", the most licensed song in their catalogue, which had two videos: one by Marcos Siega and another by Spike Jonze with wild animals. Their later hits include "Beverly Hills" and "Pork and Beans", as well as covers such as Toto's "Africa". Worldwide sales figures vary by source between 17 and more than 35 million records. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Data gathered from AllMusic, Magnet, RIAA, Wikipedia and other press coverage.