Working through the curious discography of one of the most fascinating bands of all time.

Weezer.

As a consequence of them drifting out of the intense scrutiny of the media spotlight, the long tale of Weezer’s career is often forgotten, existing as history only remembered by their most dedicated fans. If you were to meet them now and see them as they currently are — the memeworthy pop-rock dads who covered ‘Africa’ and ‘No Scrubs’— you’d be forgiven for not knowing that the Los Angeles four-piece were once a band fraught with division and turmoil. It began after the release of their second album, Pinkerton, in 1996, which wasn’t as much of a hit with fans or critics as their fondly received self-titled debut, and was even torn to shreds by some listeners who longed for whatever their debut, Blue, had that Pinkerton was supposedly missing. Bassist Matt Sharp left the band, lead singer Rivers Cuomo disappeared from view almost completely, and the group entered a period of hiatus before the turn of the century.

Even after reemerging in the new millennium with new bassist Mikey Welsh, a pair of new albums, and something of a new sound, the band’s relationship with their fans (and themselves) remained complicated. Their first releases with the new line-up, Green and Maladroit, both achieved commercial success, but even after being consulted during the writing process for the latter record, fans weren’t exactly taking the new offerings with open arms. Another new bassist, Scott Shriner, was also brought on board around this time. As the fanbase struggled to adapt to the new stuff, Rivers was keen to distance himself from what had come before —back then, he considered Pinkerton to be a “hideous record”, and he infamously dismissed Blue’s closing track, ‘Only in Dreams’, as “Disney gay!” Even as Pinkerton was slowly developing a reputation as something of a misunderstood classic by the mid-2000s, the releases of Make Believe, Red, and Raditude between 2005 and 2009 left some die-hards with no choice but to file for discography divorce. Despite their best efforts, Weezer just weren’t Weezer anymore, apparently.

In the 2010s, though, things mellowed out. 2012’s Weezer Cruise saw the band connect with the fans in ways they hadn’t been able to since their earliest days; new albums Everything Will Be Alright in the End and White were warmly received by fans and critics alike; and even after Pacific Daydream, Teal, and Black struggled to inspire that same cheer, things have still settled on a very peaceful resolution as we head into the 2020s. The band themselves helped this process by acknowledging their part in damaging the bond with their followers, and absolutely developed the ability to laugh along with their inconsistent discography. So, after a long and complicated history which had seen two line-up changes, a string of divisive albums, and frayed connections with their fans, Weezer finally, and comfortably, nestled into their spot as a lovable, affectionately irritating, legacy act. It’s hard to imagine anyone having much of an angry word to say about them at present, such has been the softening of their image. Instead of being the biggest disappointment or the butt of the joke, they’re now the cheeky scamps who covered Toto, got themselves on the Frozen II soundtrack, and will soon be releasing an album styled on the works of Van Halen.

All of this is to say that, thanks to their fascinating trajectory — which has seen them change style as often as they’ve changed their members, and release a string of divisive albums — writing about each of their records has become an increasingly difficult task. In the outside world, a consensus formed ages ago that Weezer were great in the 1990s, mediocre to terrible in the 2000s, and then returned mixed results in the 2010s. The fanbase, however, sees things slightly differently. Yes, there’s the general opinion that largely follows the same trajectory as the aforementioned consensus — Blue and Pinkerton are considered classics, we mostly think Raditude sucks, we generally think White is their third best album — but you won’t have to search far to find a Weezer die-hard who’s a self-proclaimed member of The Hurley Gang, or a die-hard Weezer fan who thinks Red is better than Pinkerton. Hell, the words “Maladroit is underrated” have been uttered so many times that I’m not actually sure if it’s underrated anymore. And then you’ll find a die-hard Weezer fan like me, who thinks all of their albums are underrated (to some degree) and who happens to love ‘We Are All on Drugs’. Yep, really.

And as soon as I publish this list and share it on social media, I’m almost certain that someone will hop in to say that a particular album is placed too low, or that another album is placed too high. Frankly, I can’t wait, because above everything else, I love Weezer, and discussing their years of work is still a hobby of mine — not just because they’re fascinating as a spectacle, but because their music is entertaining even without context. The context is just an added bonus. Most importantly, though, in the case of writing and publishing this list, I mostly just can’t wait to prove myself right — that Weezer and their fans have one thing in common: they are both impossible to properly pin down.

14. Raditude (Nov. 2009)

I love Weezer more than most folks, but even I can’t sit here and defend Raditude much. I forget how much I’d hate it if any other band had released it, and that’s because I’ve been unable to finish it for a while now. I love it and I know every word, but I hate it. What does that say about me?

Usually, I get as far as ‘Put Me Back Together’ before I find any excuse to check out. For the purposes of this reassessment, I made it to the end this time. My assessment is that this really is the one Weezer album from the 2000s that’s as terrible as everyone says. Dr. Luke (among other super producers) is brought on board to land the boys another hit single, but it’s a hugely misguided decision: attempting to keep up with the kids makes them sound older than ever.

This pulls from pop rock, pop rap, electropop, and even bhangra, but offers up lifeless and crass interpretations of each. It peaks with opener, ‘I Want You To’ — a thoroughly enjoyable pop ditty that’s peppered nicely with the kind of sincerity and earnest pulpy goodness that’s absent from what follows. After that, it wallops the listener with repeated downturns. ‘I’m Your Daddy’ takes a few nice harmonic turns in its chorus but the lyrical content hammers home the very real concern that Rivers was a 39-year-old father and husband by this point. ‘The Girl Got Hot’ is a serious contender for the band’s worst song — it’s a high school jock-rock tale about leering at someone during a concert. ‘Put Me Back Together’ could be any band (really, literally any band on the planet) warming up before rehearsal. I mean, just look at them performing it live. Screeching guitars and faux-macho posturing spoil the perfectly serviceable power pop of ‘Let it All Hang Out’. And arriving near the end, ‘In the Mall’s revolving lead riff suffers from a fatal lack of imagination.

It’s ‘Can’t Stop Partying’, though, that steals the show — sadly, for all the wrong reasons. Like the rest of Raditude, I’ve actually grown affectionate towards it because of how much time I’ve spent trying to work out how serious the guys were when they made this. An ironic acoustic demo, originally recorded a year earlier, found its way into the hands of super rap producer Jermaine Dupri. He then put it through the studio and invented this ghastly thing. Any trace of irony is erased, and Lil Wayne makes an appearance because whatever the fuck (“Okay bitches, Weezer and it’s Weezy / upside down MTV”). It drags on. And yet, somehow, it’s the essential listening experience of Raditude. If you want to explain to somebody that Weezer got really bad without taking up more than five minutes of their life, just show them this.

Raditude’s biggest crime is probably how tedious it all feels, though. It’s not so much clean as it is sterile, and it’s miles behind the curve of the pop charts it shoots for. I feel awful saying this, but it is the only time I’ll say it for the remainder of this countdown: the purists are right, Raditude (much as the Weezer loyalist in me loves it) actually sucks.

13. Death to False Metal (Nov. 2010)

Death to False Metal’s journey spans twelve years, with the oldest demos (‘Everyone’ and ‘Trampoline’) originally recorded as far back as 1998. Honorary fifth member Karl Koch had been compiling a collection of demos since 2003, and 2010 saw the release of a bunch of them.

A harsh assessment would conclude, however, that the songs collected here amount to very little. They present themselves as worthy soundtracks to rocking out, but rarely does any of the material stop you from believing that this is anything more than a collection of cast-offs and unfinished fragments. Even when they haven’t been at their creative peak on certain albums, Weezer have always had a grasp of dynamics at the very least — knowing when to approach the audience with a big chorus or a subtle slow-burner, or when to jump from one extreme to the other — but everything here sounds so flat. People criticise Green for having an unadventurous sonic palette but the songs here feel more like Nirvana covers performed with little energy or enthusiasm, and wind up feeling pretty ordinary.

One of the very few songs I can recall immediately is ‘I’m a Robot’, and that’s only because it stands out like a sore thumb — its rudimentary chorus melody cheaply mimicking ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. As a piece of art, that’s its one defining feature. ‘Losing My Mind’, a slow, weepy lament about something or other sounds as though the band wanted to be literally anywhere else while recording it. ‘Everyone’ maintains some initial excitement with its de-tuned, revolving lead riff, at least until that riff never ends and Rivers starts asking the listener to “suck a thumb” and “kick a bum”. And you can add ‘Blowin’ My Stack’ to the small catalogue of misguided songs about the average worker that Rivers has penned over the years.

There are songs here that would slot comfortably into the tracklists on other albums. Originally recorded for Red but cut from the final release, ‘Autopilot’ is the best song here — it has the most vibrant arrangement of all ten tracks and it contains unique, distinctive features that separate it (both compositionally and sonically) from the surroundings. The opener ‘Turning Up the Radio’ (written in collaboration with a dozen YouTubers) has lacklustre verses delivered out of tune, but the call-and-response in the chorus is something to look out for. ‘I Don’t Want Your Loving’ wouldn’t exactly be a highlight of the band’s better albums, but it would have been interesting to see them add it to the Make Believe over, say, ‘My Best Friend’.

So, the worst of Death to False Metal is lifeless, and it would only be curious to see how its best songs would fit into the tracklists of other albums. Is that enough, really? Raditude might well be the weaker of the two records, but even if this was released and marketed as a fully-fledged studio album, there would be precious little here that couldn’t just be ignored. This is for die-hards only, and fans like me who just want to mine Weezer’s archive for every nugget I can find. If you skipped this, I’m not sure how much you’d miss.

12. The Teal Album (Jan. 2019)

There’s very little to say about Teal. Whenever I listen to it, which is rarely, honestly, I get the feeling that Weezer woke up on a Friday morning, decided to record a handful of covers on Saturday afternoon, and had it done by the Sunday night.

It doesn’t demand much of your attention and it doesn’t encourage much in the way of thought or serious consideration. The covers here are always inoffensive, often bland, and sometimes awkward. Only occasionally do the guys sound like they’re trying to put their own stamp on the classics they’ve chosen for the tracklist. It’s never terrible, exactly, but it’s never any good either. It keeps a non-committal pose and politely pays homage to Michael Jackson, Toto, TLC, and even The Turtles. And that’s fine, it’s a novelty record that can be memed into oblivion, which is exactly what happened after its release.

Essentially, there’s a formula to work out your feelings on this album: how much the joke works on you ÷ how much it bothers you that the covers on show here are the kind that a wedding band would probably be proud of. Two of these covers are quite good (‘Happy Together’ and ‘No Scrubs’) because they’re the only songs here that feel like it’s actually Weezer covering or paying tribute to something. Everything else could have been done by any other band wanting to pay tribute to some legends. It was a big mistake for them to cover Black Sabbath, though, and to leave Rivers off vocal duty . And that’s all you need to know.

11. Hurley (Sep. 2010)

It would be easy to view Hurley as Weezer’s ugliest record. Somehow it isn’t, because what this album might lack in subtlety and grace, it makes up for with serious momentum and drive — and an uptick in quality from Raditude.

The production on the rhythm section is as thick as it is loud, and it gives Weezer a much muddier, gnarlier sound. The robotic cleanliness of Raditude is gone, replaced by something that’s sloppier, and altogether more charming. From the moment the vomitously thick bassline meets the elephant stomping kick drum on opener ‘Memories’, it’s clear that moving to Epitaph gave Weezer more creative freedom (it’s the first album they’ve mostly self-produced since Maladroit).

‘Memories’ is a good opener that belongs in the conversation for Weezer’s best song from this little era— where they released Raditude, “the Weezer snuggie”, Hurley, Death to False Metal, ‘Represent!’ (for the US national soccer team), appeared on the Cars 2 soundtrack, and did a “Weezer cruise” festival on a boat. Honestly, 2009–2012 must be a blur in Rivers’ mind by now. But Hurley is the peak of that particular period. ‘Ruling Me’ is a rambunctious, reluctant love song. ‘Trainwrecks’ treads similar ground to ‘Pardon Me’ from Make Believe but it’s still suitably direct and its chord sequence takes interesting towards the end of each phrase in the verses. The chorus of ‘Hang On’ is the best thing about the second half of the album, as is Michael Cera’s performance on the mandolin — the “rock version”, which didn’t make it onto the final album, would have made for a great ‘alternate take’ bonus track.

Sometimes, things get silly. ‘Smart Girls’, the worst song here by a length, is ridiculous. Rivers is so amazed that smart women exist, apparently, and decides to scream and yell terrible lyrics about it. It’s unpleasant. For the longest time I was convinced that my copy of ‘Time Flies’ was broken, but nope, it really does just sound like that. ‘Where’s My Sex?’ has a lot of energy and just gets away with it, but it’s clearly Rivers in troll mode — that nasal delivery, that unusual change of direction two thirds in, those lyrics (“Where’s my sex, I thought it was here / under the bench, but it isn’t there”). To put it another way, this album contains a handful of songs that only Rivers Cuomo understands.

So, Hurley is Weezer’s loudest, most debauched album. It’s kept afloat by a pretty enjoyable first half — shout out to ‘Unspoken’, the tender ballad that grows into rock-out session really nicely — but it is truly an outlier in their discography (much in the manner that Raditude and Teal are, too, only better). This isn’t so much a power pop album as it is a sludgy alternative rock one, which is fine, especially when the material is pretty solid, but does stop this from being ranked any higher.

10. Pacific Daydream (Oct. 2017)

As is the case with every Weezer album not named Raditude, the hate for Pacific Daydream is understandable but still unwarranted.

I think the worst thing you could accuse this record of being is slightly bland and mostly averse to risk-taking, but I’d take that over Raditude and Death to False Metal any day. Returning to this properly for the first time in a while, ‘Happy Hour’ is clearly the worst offender. For this reassessment, I mostly listened to these in the car, and if there’s any song here that suits the monotony and anonymity of British motorways, it’s that one. ‘Feels Like Summer’ is mostly guff and completely out of character for the band, too, but I have to concede that even on autopilot Rivers can’t resist writing a sweet melody here and there (“Shattered by an email, your words will fade away…”). ‘Happy Hour’ doesn’t even contain something like that.

‘Mexican Fender’ is great, though. Sure, those opening guitar chords aren’t encouraging, but it grows confidently, throws out a wonderful chorus (complete with ooh-wee-oohs), and then careers into an up-tempo bridge section that takes half a dozen interesting harmonic turns that breathe new life into it. ‘Weekend Woman’ — the final product of a resurrected demo from the sessions for Green — is gorgeous as well, and finds the band in full flow as a Beach Boys tribute band, much in the manner of ‘(Girl We Got A) Good Thing’ from White. ‘Sweet Mary’ walks a similar line between the modern, polished version of Weezer and Brian Wilson’s melancholy sunshine pop, and has a good deal of success with it. And though it isn’t quite as evocative of their legendary influences, ‘QB Blitz’ is a pretty acoustic ballad with some curious lyrical imagery. These are the songs that lift Pacific Daydream into safe territory, because there are some particularly rough moments elsewhere.

Above everything else, Pacific Daydream’s worst feature is its transparency. It’s obvious when Rivers is trying to re-do Twenty One Pilots (‘Feels Like Summer’), or when he’s trying to do something Maroon 5 might have released in 2013 (‘La Mancha Screwjob’), or something Avicii might have added EDM synths to around the same time (‘Get Right’). Something that stops every track from reaching its full potential, though — even the stronger efforts — is the production. It’s so clean. Too clean. It’s that clip in Spongebob where the titular character says, “I smoothed out the edges of my personality and the rest just followed suit, now I am utterly normal”, with Weezer shedding quite a lot of what makes them who they are in order to make a quick buck by delivering an impression of themselves to a 2010s teen audience. Now, it turns out they can still produce decent tunes in this mode, but the mode is obvious all the same.

So, I understand where the dislike comes from in principle, but in terms of what’s here I’m not sure it’s deserving of such a bad reputation. The production is so clean that it makes the album sound bland in the moments when the songwriting isn’t at its strongest, but Rivers actually manages to conjure up some of his prettiest compositions and most interesting lyrics on this. It gets a firm pass.

9. Make Believe (May 2005)

Now I’ve gone and done it. Honestly, the biggest crime Make Believe commits is occasionally drifting into mild tedium. It does play things a little too safe. But that’s it.

Sure, ‘Hold Me’ is a little slow, but it’s still a sweet, innocent little song that’s lifted nicely by a gorgeous guitar bridge at the end of its second act. ‘The Damage in Your Heart’ causes four minutes to drag by somewhat, but it’s sincere and mellow. ‘Freak Me Out’ remains very skeletal, even into its final stages, but those guitar harmonics (and its brief harmonica interlude) are to die for. I suppose that after the duo of Green and Maladroit (which, combined, are just three minutes longer than this lone album) this might seem a little too bloated and mid-tempo, but is that fatal?

This album’s reputation is a real shame, because in terms of its songwriting approach it bares close resemblance to the very earliest days of the band. After Pinkerton focused so much on theory, and after Green and Maladroit shaved off all excess fat, Make Believe mostly found Rivers in an emotional, sincere place that tried to balance everything he’d learned up to this point. And when he injects some pace, the results are really promising. ‘Perfect Situation’ and ‘This is Such a Pity’ are two of Weezer’s best offerings from the 2000s, with the latter proving to be the stronger of the two simply by its nature of being a synthpop number, which they’d never tried before. ‘We Are All on Drugs’ isn’t exactly subtle but it’s one of only a handful of songs here that you could throw on for an immediate shot of goofy fun —yeah, I think I love it. The descending chord progression in ‘Pardon Me’ is a treat as well — I do like it when Rivers whips the piano out.

The mostly friendly relationship I have with this album is much easier to maintain simply because I came to it long after its release, so I never felt betrayed or let down by it. I can see why the boneheaded frat-boy attitude of ‘Beverly Hills’ would rub old fans up the wrong way, but there are definitely worse songs here. ‘My Best Friend’ is up-tempo, sure, but without much in the way of memorable lyrics or substantive content, it would have been better to see something like ‘I Don’t Want Your Loving’ take its place. ‘Peace’ is literally just two chords for four minutes and is definitely the worst offender on the record. ‘The Damage in Your Heart’ is sincere and mellow, but it’s also very weepy and a little too mid-tempo.

Ultimately, though, Make Believe just drifts pleasantly, almost in and out of consciousness, over 55 minutes. It could have easily been 45 minutes with some necessary excisions, but I’m splitting hairs about something that’s not mine. This is not what a controversial album normally sounds like — this simply tries to find a balance between Rivers’ search for sincerity and his quest for a pop hit. It doesn’t always manage that, and it drifts in to tedium when at its worst, but this is still thoroughly decent.

8. The Red Album (Jun. 2008)

The quintessential 21st century Weezer album. Ambitious, rebellious, sarcastic, scattershot, clumsy, artsy, misguided, experimental, truncated, hilarious, seminal, cringeworthy, fascinating. The album that both poses and solves the riddle of “What the fuck happened to Weezer?”

At times this is a little self-indulgent and silly, and a little too rebellious and sarcastic as well, but so much better than I’d initially given it credit for. I think this might be the Weezer album that’s grown on me the most in the shortest amount of time. Even as recently as a year ago (so, February 2019) I thought this was a complete mess — something that pulled from so many sources with such an unwarranted cocksure attitude that it wound up completely disorganised and hilariously clustered. But I was being too mean. Red isn’t even good (it’s just completely and utterly decent), but it is absolutely fascinating.

‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’ is one of the band’s most ambitious songwriting efforts, and I include the detailed approach to Pinkerton’s back half in that — it should fall flat on its face but it’s propelled constantly by a consistently strong personality that emerges from each of its individual suites. It’s Weezer’s own ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, if you will. Just look at this incredible live performance. It’s followed up by the frankly excellent ‘Pork and Beans’, which harks back to the sessions for Green and Maladroit with its direct structure and clear chorus melodies — it’s got tonnes of replay value, too, as the band rally against studio execs and the expectations placed upon them. And though Rivers’ ambition goes slightly overboard on ‘Dreamin’, the variations on display are still thoroughly entertaining and occasionally very sweet.

It’s a shame about almost everything else. The three-song suite written by the rest of the band is messy. None of the other members are as good behind the microphone as Rivers is, and the compositions they’ve put forward aren’t up to snuff. Brian Bell’s ‘Thought I Knew’ is several re-writes from being finished and contains some of the band’s worst lyrics; Scott Shriner’s ‘Cold Dark World’ has questionable lyrical content as well, and lacks the necessary punch to support its descending riffs; Pat Wilson’s ‘Automatic’ might sound as though it’s significantly ramped up but that’s merely an illusion, and it sounds uncannily like The Walker Brothers’ ‘Death of Romance’ as well. Album opener ‘Troublemaker’ also has me questioning to this day whether it’s completely serious or a parody dressed up as a rebellious response to criticism the band has received.

‘Everybody Get Dangerous’, though, works in the same way ‘We Are All on Drugs’ did on Make Believe. It’s a blast. The sincerity pouring out of the affectionate melodies on ‘Heart Songs’ also elevate what would have been an otherwise sleepy ballad. Closer ‘The Angel and the One’ is a worthy contender for a huge Weezer fan’s funeral song. And yet, hanging over Red is its distinctive cover, which inspires the constant questioning about whether this whole thing was an elaborate satire. The cowboy hat, the moustache, the proud posing… who’s it all for?

The level of ambition here veers from one extreme to the other, and the detectable levels of sincerity behave in the same way. This is a record of bizarre and wonderful extremes, of successful experiments and unbelievable failures, of absolutely everything that represents Weezer’s post-millennium output.

7. The Black Album (Mar. 2019)

Rivers has conceded that ‘Africa’s success put the original version of Black on hold — the final version is ‘much cooler’, he says, and he might well be right.

Weezer fans remain fearful of the band’s habit of substituting encouraging demos with underwhelming replacements, but despite the implied changes, Black remains an effective counterpart to White and a refreshing palette cleanser for the band. Where White found comforting nostalgia in grungy power pop guitars and hazy Santa Monica beaches, Black is a polished pop product itching to escape the urbanised commotion of Los Angeles nights. It’s Weezer updated, and they’re ready to talk about the interwebs.

The guys have diverted from their usual formula before, but previous attempts have come across as misguided. On Black, they have their finger closer to the pulse. Legacy acts tend to view social media as a frivolous oddity and wind up as dismissive outsiders, but Weezer have always seen its value. The video for ‘Buddy Holly’ was on the install CD for Windows 95, the ‘Pork & Beans’ video starred viral sensations before we had the proper terminology for them, and Cuomo once lived on social media — the Internet is a world they understand and know how to critique.

The video for ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle’ supports this. Guided by the assured hands of TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, Weezer enter new territory with this one, armed with synthetic funky basslines, frenetic drum patterns, and Mariachi brass hooks. Yes, really. It bustles and chatters incessantly while Rivers stresses over Internet clout (“Leave a five-star review and I’ll leave you one too”). And though it may lack the instant appeal of Black’s lead single, ‘Too Many Thoughts in My Head’ is a restless funk pastiche that’s bewildered by an increasingly saturated, digitised, and ultimately wasteful twenty-first-century society.

‘High as a Kite’ is a despondent lament that recognises an upsetting truth: the outside world has occupied our old hiding places (Google owns our old YouTube videos, Disney are buying everything in sight, Twitter approaches us like a private diary before spilling our secrets). The only remaining escape for Rivers is to “vanish into the atmosphere”. ‘Zombie Bastards’ would usually be added to the list of Weezer songs I consider to be out of character, too, but those upstroked earworm hooks are a delight and it stays on track with the album’s chief concern: encroaching forces (in this case, zombies) will take away everything we hold dear.

A consequence of Weezer’s stylistic left-turns on Black are its missteps. ‘Living in L.A.’ is an up-tempo radio hit in waiting but it’s uncomfortably sewn together by cheesy studio gimmicks. ‘I’m Just Being Honest’ is satisfactory but somewhat dispassionate arena-sized pop rock. Closer ‘California Snow’ has an enticing near-linear structure but is still a bizarrely brash electropop song that only Rivers understands. Despite the misfires, Black’s thematic discipline allows the guys to step confidently into their future. Their recent uptick in form had been supported by successfully channelled home comforts, but here they sound fully invested into exploring, and more than capable of handling, a new pop sound. This is a unique addition to their discography that sees them preparing for the future, however bleak and overwhelming it might seem.

6. Everything Will Be Alright in the End (Oct. 2014)

Say it quietly, but Weezer nearly get back to their very, very best here.

They brought Ric Ocasek back on board for Green in 2001 in order to rediscover the streamlined, melodic power pop sound that had defined the most popular exports from Blue, but this time they’ve brought him back to unearth something else entirely. This isn’t “their best album since Pinkerton”, but it is their most diverse and their most ambitious. Some of the songwriting choices on this album make me wonder why they didn’t employ the same level of dedication and care on Raditude, or on any of the demos on Death to False Metal that maybe never should have seen the light of day. But never mind, at least we have this now — and without Raditude, Weezer wouldn’t be Weezer.

This was an apology record of sorts, but it wasn’t just that: this was the most reflective and considerate Rivers had been in more than a decade. ‘Ain’t Got Nobody’ and ‘Back to the Shack’ feel like apologies to the fans who felt let down by those previously mentioned albums. ‘Eulogy for a Rock Band’ isn’t necessarily about Weezer themselves but it still analyses the emotional struggle at the heart of any rock band’s creative decline. ‘I’ve Had it Up to Here’ is another ‘Pork & Beans’, with Rivers rallying against label execs and producers who think they know better. ‘Foolish Father’ is something of a sequel to ‘Say It Ain’t So’ and is the most emotionally revealing song Rivers has penned since ‘Butterfly’. Put simply, Everything Will Be Alright in the End is the sound of Weezer looking back at themselves, and it makes for some really impressive work.

Because let’s face it, Weezer’s biggest problem during their weaker moments has never been their sound exactly, it’s always been in their lyrics and the accompanying aesthetics that have encouraged the questioning of their sincerity. Here, everything is entirely sensible and sensitive. ‘The British Are Coming’ feels like a beautiful, symphonic composition compared to the previous album’s offerings. The way ‘Da Vinci’ grows into something stadium-sized, tender, and passionate from that slightly novelty intro is a wonderful surprise; the drop into 5/4 for one bar as ‘Cleopatra’ begins its chorus is something to behold as well. Arriving right at the end, ‘The Futurescope Trilogy’ sees Weezer attempt something vaguely proggy and is a welcome curveball.

Not everything here is brilliant. ‘Lonely Girl’ is upbeat and pleasant but it feels like a pre-Green demo that was added in here to pad out the tracklist, and ‘Go Away’ (featuring Beth from Best Coast) is, again, pleasant, but it’s cliched, and the incessant usage of the words “go away, go away, go away” can cause it to drag on. But we’re in a post-Maladroit world here and we’re only criticising two songs on a Weezer album, and they’d both be stand-outs on Raditude. This record is such a treat, and for it to come so late in the day for Weezer — after years of (admittedly overstated) mediocrity — makes it all the more welcoming of an experience. It’s diverse, earnest, and always burning to deliver great power pop. Awesome.

5. Maladroit (May 2002)

Just like every other Weezer album out there that isn’t Raditude, the truth we’re all hiding from is that Maladroit is, at the very least, much better than its reputation suggests.

This is crunchy, crisp, and very fucking loud. Written almost as a collaborative effort between the band and the fans, it’s also short, snappy, and energetic — a record that somehow makes best friends of power pop & hard rock. The opening trio is perhaps Weezer’s best three-song run of the 21st century until you reach ‘King of the World’, ‘Summer Elaine & Drunk Dori’ and ‘L.A. Girlz’ on White (which arrived a full fourteen years later). With a beefed up drum sound and guitar crunch really giving the album an early booster, Weezer sound positively refreshed after a difficult hiatus period and a re-entry to the pop world with Green. Even the little trio that follows soon after the opening set — ‘Death & Destruction’ (which has a nice lean into post-rock every once in a while), ‘Slob’ (which is packed to the gills with grit and energy), and ‘Burnt Jamb’ (which moves effortlessly between sun-tinged jangle pop and hard rock) — stands up quite confidently after all this time. Arriving a little later in the day is ‘Slave’, one of the last subtle songs the guys would record for some time after this, and the riffage on ‘Fall Together’ sounds — in the best way — as though it was written for a completely different group. It’s a huge adjustment to hear Weezer finally letting their shred-heavy, hard rock roots come shining through, but it really works here.

I think, out of all Weezer’s post-Pinkerton albums, this is the best one to simply let loose with. There’s so much air guitar potential, and the ability to perform air guitar routines is an underestimated quality when it comes to various rock releases. You can’t hold much against this record. At its best it’s as concise and direct as Green was, and at the same time it sees Weezer briefly flirt with hard rock, which is a style I’d like to see them try on again.

Sure, this record falls short in some places. Certain songs — such as ‘Possibilities’ or ‘Space Rock’ — could have become something stronger if they were given an extra minute or two just to introduce new dimensions and take new turns. Oh, and while ‘Take Control’ hits as hard as it intends to (and has a great little shredding session from Rivers hidden inside) it never quite moves away from its double-time ‘Children of the Revolution’ homage. But beyond that, I struggle to find much to fault here. This is home to Weezer’s second-best single of the 2000s in ‘Keep Fishin’ (behind ‘Island in the Sun’), it’s home to the terrific jump-along chorus of ‘Love Explosion’, and it winds down with a pleasant bluesy number in ‘December’. God, I’ve got this far and I haven’t specifically mentioned ‘Dope Nose’! Man, this thing is loaded with killer tracks.

I’ll say it again for those at the back: Maladroit is underrated.

4. The White Album (Apr. 2016)

Everything Will Be Alright in the End was great, and a real return to form, but this was even better and officially marked the 2010s as something of a renaissance period for Weezer.

One good album suddenly became two, and that counts as a winning streak in my book. At the time, though I didn’t realise it initially, this was legitimately their best album for fifteen years, and ‘L.A. Girlz’ was their best song since ‘Island in the Sun’. 9/11 hadn’t even happened when the former was released. That’s how much time had passed. As much as I think the vitriol directed at Weezer’s mid-00s albums was always a little misguided, it had been a very long time since they’d done a song as wonderful as ‘L.A. Girlz’ that was worthy of near-universal praise in the fanbase — when its guitar solo nestles beautifully back into the final chorus I get a wave of intense emotion akin to headrush that makes me think “Oh wow, Weezer really were back when they made this.”

The run from the opening seconds of ‘King of the World’ through to the final seconds of ‘L.A. Girlz’ is the strongest stretch on any Weezer album since the first half of Green, and I’d even go as far as to say that it even tops that. There’s so much life and so many vibrant melodies in these songs — you can really imagine Rivers gurning and scrunching his face up with effort as he shreds away on his guitar, applying beautiful harmonic contributions and opting for really subtle (but crucial) key changes that make songs like ‘Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori’ and ‘California Kids’ soar triumphantly with ease as they reach their choruses. Even songs like ‘Jacked Up’ and ‘Good Thing’ contain beautiful stretches — the post-chorus of ‘Jacked Up’ especially (“Why, why, why do my flowers always die?”) — and enough good ingredients to be great fun for their durations.

Do we need to discuss weaknesses? I suppose. ‘Thank God for Girls’ constantly promises a raucous chorus that never arrives, but its verses build enough tension for the song to be a tolerable song. Although, having said that, Rivers is back on his “women are goddesses, I’m an insecure little boy” lyrical schtick and it rings a little strangely these days. It’s something that crops up again in ‘Endless Bummer’, but in terms of atmosphere that at least brings the album to a more than suitable cadence, a la ‘Butterfly’ on Pinkerton (only not at quite the same level, of course). The guys haven’t done anything as good as this since, despite it feeling as though they’ve released more albums than they’ve had hot dinners in the interim, but the mere fact that White exists and is as impressive as it is gives us all hope that they could unexpectedly reach these incredible heights again.

Rivers and the boys kicked back on the sandy beaches of Santa Monica for this, drawing inspiration from the amiable residents and relaxing environments. It’s a tight, compact, enthusiastic power pop album that had us believing they’d really entered a renaissance period.

3. The Green Album (May 2001)

Don’t @ me. If you think White is compact then try this on for size. On Green, Weezer successfully channel the structure of classic Merseybeat songs to produce jet-engine streamlined pop rock that has about 6% body fat and is teaming with razor-sharp melodies.

The most underrated album in Weezer’s discography? The best album released by any band in 2001? Who’s to say? No, there’s not as much going into this as there was on Blue and Pinkerton, but hey, they’re two of the best albums of the 1990s and my two favourite albums of all time. Green is definitely the invention of a new band — and how could Weezer be anything else after a five-year hiatus? — but it’s a power pop essential. You cannot afford to ignore this album if you’re serious about getting in touch with the genre.

Bringing Ric Ocasek back on board unleashes the sunshine melodies that Rivers has always been wonderful at devising. The three-song run that starts with ‘Photograph’, goes via ‘Hash Pipe’, and ends with the wonderful ‘Island in the Sun’ is one of Weezer’s best 1–2–3 combos, and though the back half doesn’t quite reach the heights of the front, the standards set by the front of the album raise the bar incredibly high. If it was played with a little slacker looseness, ‘Island in the Sun’ would be right at home in the last leg of Blue. It’s the perfect single. Again, don’t @ me.

Sure, ‘Smile’ might dampen the momentum ever so slightly (this isn’t an album that needs to slow down) and the guitar bridge sections that directly mimic the opening verse melodies might walk the line between encouraging curiosity and just frustrating people, but I find that to be a deliberate move — a choice made by a man who poured his heart and soul into Pinkerton, only to have it rejected by those who didn’t understand.

Green is polished, snappy, concise power pop, and Weezer’s third-best outing to this day. And in the spirit of the album itself, I’m not going to say anything more. All you need are the bare essentials.

2. The Blue Album (May 1994)

I constantly battle with myself over whether Blue is Weezer’s best, or whether it’s Pinkerton, or whether it’s Blue. You get the picture.

They entered the world with Blue as anxious nerds secretly armed with an entire arsenal of power pop genius. It’s an album that’s politely assertive, perfectly streamlined, and completely unforgettable. Over time, it’s become clear to me that finding it when I did was everything I ever needed to re-calibrate my personal tastes. This is the album that finally put a name to the music I’d been in love with since I was maybe fifteen — the music I’d pretended I’d grown out of by the time I was nineteen, the music Weezer brought me back to when I found them. It’s power pop, and it’s everything power pop should be.

Rivers Cuomo’s penchant for nostalgia matches mine, his clear affection for soaring choruses reflects my own, and the band’s irrepressible urge to turn everything up to eleven inspires the air-guitarist within me to mime the endless array of instantly striking drum-fills and ace guitar licks that are littered throughout. Board games like Dungeons & Dragons are as present on Blue as the Fender Stratocaster, while Brian Wilson’s melancholia echoes through its hallways as much as Gene Simmons’ stadium-commanding hyperactivity. From front to back this is power pop poetry and the ultimate musical refuge for nerds everywhere. It’d be a waste of time to talk about individual tracks, to be honest, because it comes as a complete package — but heck, I might as well. After all, I’m not sure I’ve ever pressed play on ‘My Name is Jonas’ without letting ‘Only in Dreams’ fade out 41 minutes later, so I have to talk about the songs in between.

‘Undone — The Sweater Song’, ‘Say It Ain’t So’, and lead single ‘Buddy Holly’ all belong in the argument for Weezer’s very best song. And even deeper cuts like ‘Only in Dreams’ and ‘The World Has Turned and Left Me Here’ wouldn’t feel out of place in that conversation either. It’s getting a little tiresome now, maybe, to see the top end of Weezer rankings dominated by all things Blue, but this record’s strengths can’t be understated. Its one weakness — if you can call it that — is the choice to have ‘Surf Wax America’ on the tracklist over ‘Mykel & Carli’, but as a band who worshipped the Beach Boys as much as they worshipped Green Day and Nirvana, it makes perfect sense for their surf rock influence to rear its head (it does, too, on ‘Holiday’, which might be this record’s most underrated song). Even ‘No One Else’ gets away with its bitterly misogynistic lyrical content because it’s self-aware and ironic — the misogynist asshole boyfriend depicted in the song gets his due on the succeeding track, ‘The World Has Turned and Left Me Here’. Just ask Rivers himself.

Across its duration, nostalgic introspection and skyscraper songwriting combine to form an irrepressible collection of rock gems that leap straight out from the garage and embed themselves into your nervous system, sitting there and digging deeper for years afterwards. One of my favourite records of all time. It deserves all the goodwill in the world.

1. Pinkerton (Sep. 1996)

Pinkerton is Rivers Cuomo’s most embarrassing moment.

Frankly, I’d be horrified if I spilled my guts in public like Pinkerton does. It stands on stage after the lights have gone up and shouts its darkest secrets through pathetic tears, angrily resisting any attempts to wrestle the microphone out of its sweaty hands. Over its ten tracks, it produces an endless string of painfully cringeworthy episodes and conjures up heaps of uncomfortable imagery . On this album, Rivers is, seemingly all at once: a pig and a dog, someone who wonders how an eighteen year-old girl touches herself, someone who constantly feels the need to apologise, someone who fetishises Japanese women, and someone who has turned his own misery into overwhelming self-hatred.

As this album moves through its various phases, Rivers continually exposes himself as a lonely child, obsessed with the allure of women (regardless of their age, their opinion of him, or their awareness of his existence) but completely incapable of seeing them as actual people. They’re either fear-inducing goddesses, completely disposable, or mistakes he’s made — there is no middle ground. It’s patronising, and deeply entrenched in misogynistic expectations of the role of women in his life.

As an album, this nervously trembles through a vast array of complicated and desperate recollections that display worrying personality traits, levels of insecurity that require professional psychiatric assistance to resolve, and a concerning lack of self-control. As I said, it’s both a pig and a dog at the same time that drools all over the place. A nightmare permanently preserved in audio.

I should clarify the above by stating that it is the greatest fucking album of all time.

This is the best of everything Weezer are — not were, are. And more specifically, the best of everything Rivers Cuomo is as a songwriter and frontman. Yeah, Red is the quintessential 21st century Weezer record, but Pinkerton is the quintessential Weezer record for any era or century. It’s easy to understand why people think the band have changed beyond recognition in the intervening years since 1996, but their history and approach to songwriting are so deeply and profoundly affected by Pinkerton that it is impossible to envision their career without it. It’s the inevitable response to everything that happened to Rivers between summer 1994 and early 1996. And every album since has, in some way, been a response to everything that happened after its release. The hiatus, the line-up changes, the strained relationship with the fans, Rivers wanting Weezer to remain a pop rock group first and foremost, the wild and erratic alternations in approach, the ambition, the silliness, the restraint, the honesty, the cynicism, the earnestness, everything — it all starts with, and comes back to, Pinkerton.

On a personal level, this is also the album that got me into Weezer in the first place. It was 2010, I was maybe fifteen or sixteen years-old, and Eva Spence of Rolo Tomassi tweeted about catching Weezer at Reading Festival. Both acts were playing there. I was a huge Rolo Tomassi fan at the time (and I still am), so I thought, “Hey, if Eva likes this Weezer band then they should be cool!” And that’s where it all began — with that tweet, with Pinkerton (which was reissued shortly afterwards), with ‘Tired of Sex’s discordant synth lines and thick bass riff. There was no turning back, it seems. I’m 25 now — Pinkerton is my favourite album of all time, Weezer are my favourite band, and I’ve just written more than 8,000 words about every album they officially released. Something’s clearly happened.