Weezer, Oh Weezer

Weezer have been a critical punching bag since the arrival of their lackluster comback Weezer (better known as 'The Green Album') in 2000. The album was lazy, lacked inspiration, and just wasn't as fun as the summertime zeitgeist of 'The Blue Album' (1994), or the soul searching rockfest, Pinkerton (1996). A big part of the record's failure is in part to departure of original bassist Matt Sharp, who seemed to take the fun with him over to his own band The Rentals (even on his own personal Pinkerton, the reflective lost weekend Seven More Minutes).

Not to say 'The Green Album' was all bad - the album's first two singles, "Hash Pipe" and "Island In The Sun", were enjoyable enough. The problem was Weezer seemed to lose their direction as they got older. While most bands evolve and grow into a new version of themselves, Weezer progressively just started to sound like other unexciting party bands (their latest single's chorus sounds like an Andrew W.K. reject). Every once in a while they could pull off a decent single like "Perfect Situation" or "Pork & Beans", but the majority of their album tracks were weak sauce. As they moved forward through Raditude (2009) and now their latest release Hurley, the band seem only concerned with making funny videos and having hokey songs with gang vocals on the chorus, a practice that hit full swing on much panned Make Believe (2005) single "Beverly Hills", a song I never thought was that bad, but was a depressingly far cry from the similarly loose love anthem, "El Schorcho". The band seem to be having the time of their lives though. With their ridiculous album covers and spectacle of a live show, they're clearly still that gang of jokers we first came across in 94, even if those jokes have been stale for a decade.

Weezer
Tags: Weezer, New Music, More Music Videos