YMMV / Weezer

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• Archive Panic: The band has started releasing new albums very frequently, releasing six albums between 2001 and 2010 and then five between 2014 and 2019 (with two being released in 2019 alone). Two more albums were released in 2021, and four more were released in 2022, bringing a total of six albums in just two years. It's safe to say it's getting harder and harder to keep up with the band's recording output.
  • And that's not getting into the two-disc deluxe editions of The Blue Album and Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo's Alone home demo collections ^note  they're usually considered part of the Weezer canon by fans because much of the material was intended for Weezer - and the third volume was only available as a CD included with his book The Pinkerton Diaries , an extensive amount of demos posted to the band's official website leading up to Maladroit and Make Believe, etc.
  • Rivers has now taken this to the extreme in November 2020 by putting bundles of demos up on a website for purchase. The count currently stands at over 3,000 with the largest bundle being over 1000 demos for Everything Will Be Alright in the End.
• Audience-Alienating Era: While it's debatable as to where exactly their Audience Alienating Era started, it's widely agreed upon that Everything Will Be Alright in the End finally ended it. While it briefly might've started again with the straight-up pop album Pacific Daydream, the generally positive reception OK Human & Van Weezer have received seems to have put it on pause. ^note For now, anyway.
• Awesome Music: The Blue Album, Pinkerton, Everything Will Be Alright In The End, The White Album
  • For American soccer fans, "Represent".
  • Adding to Blue: all guitars on the album were recorded by Rivers. Yes, all of them.^note The band fired Jason Cropper during the sessions and there was no time to have Brian Bell add to them, so Rivers did it all alone to get it done quicker, since the album was already behind schedule. Brian did add backing vocals though, and was credited for rhythm guitar in the liner notes. He disagrees with Rivers' story and claims he really played guitar on the album.
  • "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived," which is essentially a Power Pop equivalent of "Bohemian Rhapsody"/"Paranoid Android" that explores the styles of different musicians and bands. Special note goes to the "Aerosmith" and "Jeff Buckley" sections.
  • "Foolish Father," which is about Rivers' complicated feelings toward his dad and his fears about how his daughter will regard him. It's a serious Tear Jerker too.
  • The guitar solos in "Return to Ithaka".
• Broken Base: Of course, the most famous are the "Blue Album and Pinkerton only" crowd, but there's also a significant amount of the fanbase who likes everything made before Make Believe, those who only like the stuff they did Make Believe and afterwards, and those who like everything they've ever done. None of these fan subdivisions get along too well. In a way it's directly comparable to the formerly fractured state of R.E.M.'s fanbase before their 2011 dissolution, though Weezer's situation is arguably tamer by comparison.
  • There are also those who wish Rivers would compile and release the entirety of Songs from the Black Hole, which were only scattered through B-Sides and his demo albums. It's gotten as far as fans compiling their own interpretations of the never-released album.
  • Everything Will Be Alright in the End is notable for being their only album since the first one that hasn't split the base in some way. The White Album continued that trend. Pacific Daydream, however, leaves fans divided once again, as do The Teal Album and The Black Album. Then came OK Human, which many consider their best work since at least The White Album. However, even with OK Human, there's a slight divide between those who like the album's softer, Baroque Pop style and those who like the songs but would prefer to hear electric versions - some have taken to adding their own electric guitar parts to OK Human songs. Van Weezer has also been generally well received, though a few have criticized the album's derivative nature. SZNZ: Spring, meanwhile, has gotten a more mixed response, with some enjoying the influence of myth and folklore that helps put them in the springtime mood, while others criticize the songwriting, saying the lyrics come off as too cheesy. SZNZ: Summer has gotten a similar mixed response, but SZNZ: Autumn and SZNZ: Winter seem to have a more positive reaction.
  • The whole thing is summed up pretty well in this Saturday Night Live sketch, which is clearly based on an actual argument the writer had or witnessed.
• Condemned by History: While several of their albums eventually became Vindicated by History, the same cannot be said for Raditude. The album originally received lukewarm reviews, but really no worse than many of their other albums, and was largely seen as an improvement over The Red Album (which itself is one of the albums that would become vindicated). Over time, however, Raditude would become widely considered their worst album.
• Critical Dissonance: Make Believe was not well-liked by critics, currently standing as their lowest-rated record on Metacritic with a 52/100. However, it remains one of the band's best-selling albums^note going platinum within a year and produced two of their biggest hits ("Beverly Hills" and "Perfect Situation").
• Cult Classic: Some of the band's lowest selling albums (like Everything Will Be Alright in the End) are their most acclaimed. Pinkerton, after underwhelming sales in its initial release, has been a steady seller, finally going platinum on its 20th anniversary in 2016.
• Epic Riff: "Burndt Jamb", "My Name Is Jonas", "Island In The Sun", "Undone (The Sweater Song)", "Only In Dreams", "Tired Of Sex", "Say It Ain't So," "Hash Pipe", "Getchoo"
• Epileptic Trees: Who, exactly, is “Eulogy for a Rock Band” about? The only hint Rivers has given is “We’ll tell you on the day he dies.”
• Fanon: Many fans of the band believe that the song "My Name is Jonas" was inspired by The Giver, though Word of God has never confirmed this.
• Fan Nickname: Their six self-titled albums are generally known by the dominant color of each one's cover art (Blue, Red, Green, White, Teal, and Black). "The Blue Album" and "The Green Album" came purely from the fans - after that, to some degree it became the band leaning into the fans' tendency for these nicknames. The Black Album was even mentioned by name in interviews as far back as 2016, three years before it actually came out, and long before any cover art was revealed.^note Other than wanting to use black as a predominant cover for the artwork, Rivers had said he wanted to make it a conceptual antithesis of The White Album
  • This naming scheme eventually became an Ascended Fanon of sorts on Wikipedia in 2019 thanks to "Teal" and "Black"'s releases within that same year. Normally, Wikipedia would use "[Artist Name] ([year] album)" for article titles for self-titled albums released by music artists who released multiples of such. But because of the uniqueness of Weezer's self-titled albums and the aforementioned two-self-titled-albums-in-the-same-year dilemma, they made an exception for the group, now using "Weezer ([Color] Album)" (as capitalized) for their self-titled albums.^note Had they firmly decided not to do so, then "Teal" and "Black"'s article titles would be respectively disambiguated as "Weezer (January 2019 album)" and "Weezer (March 2019 album)".
• First Installment Wins: The Blue Album and Pinkerton are Weezer's most influential and beloved (and in the former's case, commercially successful) albums, so much so that they're the only two Weezer albums to have Deluxe re-releases.
  • This also applies to their first two albums of the 2000's (The Green Album and Maladroit), which are also their third and fourth albums overall. They are generally seen as superior to the next three albums that came out during that decade. Maladroit, in particular, has became a Cult Classic in recent years, and some fans rank it as their third-best album. The Green Album also contains two of their biggest hits ("Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun").
• Fridge Brilliance: Weezer released six self-titled albums. The first three were Weezer (The Blue Album), Weezer (The Green Album), and The Red Album. In reverse, that's RGB. The next colored album after The Red Album is The White Album. What happens if you put RGB together? White. Then the next colored album is The Black Album, which is the total opposite of The White Album both lyrically and sonically. What's the opposite of White? Black.

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Weezer is so big in Japan that after their dissolution following the release of Pinkerton, it led the band to reunite when in 2000, Fuji Rock Festival offered Weezer a high-paying gig. Their popularity in Japan is addressed in "Across the Sea" and the liner notes of the Lion and the Witch EP, which contain letters from Japanese fans written in Gratuitous English. Their influence can be seen in the sound of such bands as Asian Kung-Fu Generation.
  • Not only that, Rivers's wife is Japanese and the family spends part of the year in Japan.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The B-Side "Mykel & Carli" is about two early Weezer fans who ran the band's fan club. The second verse becomes depressing when you realize that Mykel and Carli Allan both died in a car crash in 1997, right in the middle of what was already a low point in Rivers' life as he dealt with self-loathing brought about by the failure of Pinkerton. Their deaths caused Rivers to sink even further, and led to Weezer's hiatus for the rest of the 90s, while Rivers shut himself away in his home, painted his bedroom walls black, covered his windows with fiberglass insulation, and cut contact with the outside world for years.
    Back in Wilson High
    Said I had these two best friends
    'Til the school bus came
    And took my friends away
    Now I'm left alone at home
    To sit and think all day
    • On top of this, the song "Mykel & Carli" was originally a B-Side to happened to be "Undone - The Sweater Song", which featured Mykel Allan's voice as Spoken Word in Music (halfway through the song she can be heard asking for a ride to a party).
  • Two weeks before he died of a heart attack in a Chicago hotel, Mikey Welsh posted a Tweet about a dream he'd had...where he died of a heart attack in Chicago two weekends from the current date.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "El Scorcho", Rivers includes a brief reference to Green Day, another rock band from California who got big around the same time. Almost 23 years after the song's release, Weezer announced the Hella Mega Tour, a collaborative tour featuring themselves, Fall Out Boy, and, you guessed it, Green Day. They even used the relevant "El Scorcho" clip in the announcement video:
  I asked you to go to the Green Day concert
  You said you've never heard of them
  How cool is that?!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • While trying to interact with fans on an internet message board during the Maladroit sessions, Cuomo had an infamous outburst when he described the universally acclaimed "Only in Dreams" as "GAY! GAY! DISNEY GAY!". Since then, Weezer fans sometimes use the term "Disney gay" to either disparage latter-day songs they consider "cheesy" or to sarcastically admit they like a song.
  • The music video for "Pork and Beans" is sometimes jokingly called "YouTube Rewind 2009", after the annual year-end video YouTube itself does on memes and trends for that year (which the music video of "Pork and Beans" also did). The kicker is that the first Rewind video was in 2010, and the VEVO version of the "Pork and Beans" music video was uploaded on YouTube on December 13, 2009, making it fit perfectly.
  • "OKAY BITCH IT'S WEEZER AND IT'S WEEZY!", from the infamously despised "Can't Stop Partying" off of the equally despised Raditude. The line is known for coming out of nowhere, having a rapper in a Weezer song, and borderline being Narm.
  • A caption on an MTV interview erroneously identified Brian Bell as "Brian Beff". Brian Beff is now occasionally used as a Fan Nickname for him.
  • The line "wrestle with Jimmy" from "Say It Ain't So" pretty much qualifies.
  • The cover art for The Blue Album has also became rather memetic, with several memes being made of it on Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc. Additionally, any image involving people (or even objects)lined up in front of a solid blue background inevitably gets compared the album cover.
  • GODDAMN, YOU HALF-JAPANESE GIRLS ^ExplanationThe memorable opening lyrics to “El Scorcho”.
  • "RIVAH WEEZAH!"
  • "Why is there an Audible ad in the middle of my Weezer album?" ^ExplanationThe OK Human song "Grapes of Wrath" is about listening to audio books and name drops the aforementioned audio book and podcast service in the chorus. As it turned out, this wasn't paid Product Placement, though it got Audible's attention and they published a short interview with Rivers on their official website
  • OH MY GOD IT'S WEEZER.
  • Get Weezered^ExplanationIn 2023, "Buddy Holly" became a common Interrupting Meme, the famous guitar lick leading into the chorus playing over any image or scene one can imagine (usually ones that might resemble The Blue Album's cover), prompting viewers to say that they've just been "Weezered". And nobody knows why.
• Misattributed Song: They've had a lot of songs misattributed to them, but one particularly interesting case is "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus, since they would later perform a Cover Version live. And the band themselves are guilty of associating a song with the wrong artist in a lyric from "Heart Songs": "Debbie Gibson, tell me that you think we're all alone" (Tiffany was the eighties teen idol who famously covered "I Think We're Alone Now", not Debbie Gibson).
  • "American Girls" has been misattributed to Weezer, but is in fact by Rivers' side-project Homie. It does technically feature the rest of Weezer, however - the percussion is mainly a loop of Patrick Wilson's drumming, while Matt Sharp and Brian Bell sing backing vocals.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Rivers Cuomo's 'soft' voice. Say what you will about his singing for most of the band's songs, but it's hard to deny that his voice can be very soothing during ballads.
• Narm Charm: The hilarious, yet lovably misguided use of hip-hop slang scattered throughout the band's discography. Its use in "Buddy Holly" and "El Scorcho" is at least somewhat more noticeably ironic.
  • "Pig", a song about the life and subsequent execution of a pig. It's ridiculous but heartbreaking.
  • From "Beverly Hills": "Where I come from isn't all that great, my automobile is a piece of crap..."
• Nightmare Fuel: The End of "Undone (The Sweater Song)". Just listen to it.
• Once Original, Now Common: The "Pork and Beans" video was lauded upon premiere for bringing several cult internet celebrities, many of whom were the earliest YouTube stars, into the mainstream shortly before the internet became such a ubiquitous part of day-to-day life. Ten years later, mainstream web content isn't all that unique and there are far more "internet famous" people than the handful of flash-in-the-pan novelties who appeared. That said, nostalgia for early web entertainment in the late 2010s, largely due to the opinion that web content has become too heavily regulated to be as interesting as it was in the 2000s, has renewed it's kinder reputation
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Hurley lead to some cautious optimism, with many fans saying it was Green Album quality or better. Everything Will Be Alright in the End ultimately vindicated this optimism.
• Seasonal Rot: While some albums would go on to become vindicated, pretty much everything they've done since Pinkerton has been met with accusations of this at one time or another (even Pinkerton itself was seen as this back when it came out). At least until Everything Will Be Alright in the End.
• Signature Song: "Buddy Holly", "Say It Ain't So", or "Island in the Sun"; though "Beverly Hills" is their biggest hit on the charts.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The reason Pinkerton was initially a failure.
• Tough Act to Follow: Pinkerton
  • At the time, The Blue Album.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The "Pork and Beans" video brings together just about every person who was famous on the internet as of 2007, many of whom for silly novelty videos and whose 15 Minutes of Fame have long since past.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Pinkerton. It was initially blasted by critics for being far darker than The Blue Album. Music fans hated it so much that was named the worst album of 1996 in the Rolling Stone Reader's Poll that year. the album has since come to be considered one of their best efforts and one of the best rock albums of the '90s.
  • To a much lesser extent, this also applies to The Green Album and Maladroit. Much like Pinkerton, both of these albums recieved a mixed-to-slightly-negative upon release: They were too short, the lyrics were strange and they weren't Pinkerton (which at this point had begun its reappraisal). For years, only two singles from these records ("Island in the Sun" and "Keep Fishin'") were held in high regard with fans. Nowadays, while you won't find a lot of Weezer fans who would put those albums up there with The Blue Album and Pinkerton, people are much more forgiving towards them.
    • In fact, most Weezer albums have been vindicated to an extent. The Red Album and Hurley are two other examples, with Pacific Daydream showing early signs of it.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Their generally dorky, relatively clean image and lack of profanity (The Black Album and an ill-conceived Lil Wayne guest-verse on Raditude aside) can make the band come across as fairly family friendly, but their frequently dark lyrics and very blunt discussions of male sexuality very much goes against that idea. The existence of “Weezer World” in Fortnite ^note ironically this was created to promote the aforementioned Black Album - none of the songs with objectionable language are heard in-game though probably doesn’t help. This does depend on the album to an extent - most of their 2000's output is relatively clean, but something like Pinkerton reaches very dark territory that really isn't suitable for kids.
  • Invoked in the video for "High as a Kite", done as an episode of Mister Rivers' Neighborhood, with a studio audience of enthusiastic kids who gradually get confused and horrified with the song.

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