Ten Years Old and Still Making Noise, Making Noise
Near the end of the "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" from Weezer's 1994 self-titled debut, frontman Rivers Cuomo repeats the line, "Do you believe what I sing now?" Ten years later seems as good a time as any to contemplate an answer. Geffen has just released a "Deluxe" edition of what has been dubbed The Blue Album, remastered, prettily packaged, and accompanied by a bonus disc of b-sides, rehearsal tapes, and unreleased tracks. Now let's hop in our DeLorean and head back to a time when Y2K was just a vague threat on the distant horizon, Forrest Gump warmed our hearts at the box office, and the buzzwords of the day were "Chunnel" and "Bobbitt".
So -- do we believe the songs of The Blue Album now, in 2004? Did we then? Did we ever in our lives? Its initial release was rather inauspicious. DGC shipped 13,000 copies to stores (it would later go multi-platinum). Many listeners and critics thought it just another clever guitar band riding in the post-Nirvana wake. Look at the cover -- if that's not the iconic image of '90s alt-rock slackerdom, then I'll go buy a Marcy Playground album at full price. Who could tell at the time that Weezer would one day be honored with the royal "Anniversary Edition" reissue alongside James Brown, Blind Faith, Gin Blossoms, and Marvin Gaye. Gin Blossoms?
Ten years doesn't seem long enough for music to become dated, but any Gen-Xer worth their salt could name you at least ten bands from 1994 that the world has turned and left. Weezer should not be one of them. The Blue Album sounds as fresh as it does catchy, and if it's not entirely perfect, it's no new miserable experience either. Almost every song on the album could have been (or was) a great single. The leadoff track, "My Name is Jonas", begins with an acoustic figure that quickly segues into a crunchy wall of electric guitar that still satisfies. "Surf Wax America" demands that you roll down your car window and sing along, even if the lyrics endorse surfing instead of driving to work. "Say It Ain't So" is still the best song on the album, utilizing reggae influence in the verses before pounding away on the chorus and bridge, where I'm still not sure if the object of the singer's frustration cleaned up and found "Jesus" or "Cheez-its".
The album stumbles in a couple places. The Blue Album bears the stamp of heavy Pixies fandom, which it mostly uses to its advantage. However, "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" sounds so much like "Gigantic" I get a little angry being denied Kim Deal singing "Hey Paul, let's have a ball." The album's closer, "Only in Dreams," while a nice change of pace, is a little sluggish. A couple of the songs from the Deluxe Edition's second disc could have made nice additions to the tracklist, particularly the infectious b-sides "Susanne" and "Jamie".
Apart from the catchiness of the album, what keeps The Blue Album from the dust-covered used bins of nostalgia hell is that it tightropes the line between irony and sincerity, which makes it both accessible and enduring. In 1994, mainstream popular culture was pierced nose-deep in irony, winking hipsters whose art was all about sarcastic declarations. On the other side of the fence were painfully earnest, ham-fisted bands whose main agenda was to reveal their woefully tortured souls. Where did Weezer fit in? At first glance it would appear they were a little of column A, a little of column B. Various bands, for better or worse, that borrowed from the Weezer canon over the past decade have taken cues from both their smarty-pantsness and their heartbreak. But mostly they got it wrong.
Sensitive emo bands and meaty alterna-rockers alike channeled Weezer's sincerity and self-awareness into navel-gazing and missed the sense of humor. For example, on "No One Else", Cuomo airs his dissatisfaction with a girlfriend: "I want a girl who will laugh for no one else / When I'm away puts her make-up on the shelf." Back to the original question: do we believe what Rivers is singing now? Does he really, sincerely want a girl who will only laugh at his jokes, and won't wear make-up unless she's by his side? I don't think so. The lyrics are a humorous exaggeration of the singer's feelings. If Puddle of Mudd had written the song, I have a deep suspicion that they'd actually mean it. Likewise, most emo bands take themselves too seriously to pen lines like "My girl's got a big mouth with which she blabbers a lot," and "My girl's got eyeballs in the back of her head / She looks around and around / You know it makes me sad to see her like that." Weezer succeeds where so many other bands fail because even their most simple songs manage to have depth. The songs can be goofy, sweet, sad, and joyous often all at once.
The longevity of this album is due to the fact that it's both fun and meaningful, and that it came at a time when most pop music was neither. So while honoring Weezer in among the über-legends of rock may seem ridiculous at first, it ultimately rings true. When Rivers belts out "Do you believe what I sing now?", I finally have to answer, "Yes."
— 11 May 2004
