I mean seriously, Weezer, what have they done to you? You used to be so good. I know this sounds like some meaningless ranting, and it probably is, but damn, you really had a good thing going. There was something on The Blue Album and Pinkerton that you don't really see that often in music: the truth.
Not the truth as in some idea of honesty, but the Truth. You know. The Truth, capitalized, because it was more of an entity or an idea than anything else. It was the same Truth that the Violent Femmes expressed so well on Violent Femmes, the Truth about coolness, or the lack thereof. The Truth that Buddy Holly embodied but ran from, the Truth that Elvis Costello kicked around before outgrowing, the Truth of what it's like to be uncool. Not just a little uncool, but uncool to the point where it's the defining characteristic of your being.
I guess it's also the Truth about being an outsider, of not fitting in, of wishing to fit in. All that. The Blue Album is just like one article of awkward acceptance of outsider status. It's not angsty, angst is too cool, Kurt Cobain had angst. Not to mention, angst is so hopelessly annoying and impotent that it would have debased everything. No, there was no angst, there wasn't anything there except the Truth, and that's why it was so damn good. From the yearning to fit in of "Undone" to the love letter to the original rock nerd himself "Buddy Holly". The Blue Album is so bare, so open that I latched onto it. Nevermind the fact that I was over a decade late to the discovery, The Blue Album might as well be timeless for just how well it sums up those awkward teenage years. So suffice to say, I clung to it, related to it, generally took it far more seriously than anyone is supposed to take any album ever.
And then I got Pinkerton, which is basically just all that but with more loneliness. Amazing. I related to "Across the Sea" so much you could be mistaken for thinking it somehow related to my life. "Butterfly" was some sort of acoustic anthem. "El Scorcho" was just everything I wanted to be, or wanted life to be, or something. Needless to say, it was great.
And then there's Make Believe, which I guess is the one you're supposed to hate or whatever, but fuck that I like Make Believe too. I mean, it's not the grand summary of my life that the others were, but it's still got the vestiges of outsider life ("Beverly Hills"), and despite its attempts to prove the contrary, Make Believe was still not cool, "Peace", "Perfect Situation", delightfully uncool. And "The Other Way" hit so close to home I should have charged it rent. So, like me, Weezer was still awkward, lame, geeky, and completely unable to fit in.
Until The Red Album. I should have noticed something was off, "Troublemaker" was not the Weezer I'd fallen in love with. Sure, the narrator in "Troublemaker" was an outsider, and a rebel, but he was cool, or if not cool, then he was stupid. And not just a little stupid, but really stupid ("You wanted arts and crafts/how's this for arts and crafts/DNDNDNDNDNDNDNDNDN"). This was not me, this was not Weezer. Or rather, it wasn't what Weezer used to be, it was something else. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" was more of the same, albeit, in a much nicer format, at least the song structure demonstrated some creativity. But "Pork and Beans" was just like three minutes of dumb jokes told by the cool kids.
I wasn't one of the cool kids. When did Weezer become the cool kids? What the fuck is going on? "Heart Songs" was something of a respite from the severe abandonment I was feeling, in that it was lame, and geeky, but it was also straight up bad. Where once Rivers Cuomo had been writing songs that delved into his personality (which felt like mine at this point), now he was writing songs about...being a rock star? I don't know, but it wasn't the kind of personal exploration I came to love and identify with. Hell, it only got more obvious with "Everybody Get Dangerous", which basically just sounded like the younger brother of a cool kid, trying desperately to fit in, and in the end just being a pest.
And then there's the three songs sung by the rest of the band. They're cool, or whatever, I guess, they're nice songs, but they're not my songs, they're not the songs I bought a Weezer album looking to hear. There's really only one moment on the entire Red Album that comes anywhere close the personal revelations of The Blue Album or Pinkerton, and that's "The Angel and the One". It's the only song that admits inferiority, that allows the bravado of "Troublemaker" to be stripped away, and it's the only song on the album that makes me think of Weezer.
And it's the last of its kind. Because I can't really listen to Weezer anymore. The Red Album is like finding someone else's blood on your bedsheets; you can wash it away, but you'll always know it's there, and you can't look at your bed without remembering the blood. I can still listen to The Blue Album and Pinkerton, but they're not speaking to me anymore, they're speaking to the audience, and that's not me. So I'll always view The Red Album as Weezer's last stand, and "The Angel and the One" as their grave.
And that just sucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment