More Than The Meme? Weezer Revisited
A poor man's essay.
*Author’s Note: This essay originally ran in Record Scratch, a music and art zine based in Missoula, Montana.
2024 will mark 30 years since the release of many amazing, influential records. Grace, By Jeff Buckley, Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York, and Ready to Die by The Notorious B.I.G. However, one album came out that year that continues to be cited as an inspiration for today’s rock, and memed about online much more than any other from the time. That album is Weezer’s self-titled debut: colloquially, the blue album. I first heard this album as a kid, my parents played it in the kitchen making dinner, in the car, and at parties. My first memories with it on my own were taking the city buses around Missoula after high school listening to it on my Skullcandy earbuds. Undone (The Sweater Song) was and continues to be my favorite from the album. The wry-ish humor and masculine stoner-nerd angst made me feel like hot shit.
I loved how it made me feel like I was really rocking out. In retrospect I was not as cool or punk as I thought I was, but it launched me into 90s rock, and everything else I listen to now came from that. It felt like through the pandemic, the rise of “loser-core” memes grew substantially. I’m sure you’ve seen them, “Guy in a corner at a party: They don’t know I listen to Radiohead”, or a Wojak pointing gleefully at a Pulp Fiction (1994) movie poster. It usually makes some reference to music or media, Radiohead, The Smiths, or a movie like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). They are generally non-original and made for quick likes, as funny or relatable as some are. Weezer is often the subject of these memes. When you talk to people about bands like Weezer, many reference the memes. I’ve heard “I listen to Weezer but not like that” or some variation many times in my own life. It got me thinking, 30 years after the release of the blue album, can we look past the meme? Is Weezer still relevant? Should we care about them at all, or is this pointless? I asked people around campus about their memories with this album, and how they felt about the memes. The conversations did not disappoint.
Kate Widmer- Editor of Record Scratch, One Of The Smartest People I Know, Really Good Guitar Player
“Weezer was my mom’s favorite band in college.” Kate said, because of this she never saw Weezer as “guy music”. A big part of the jokes in the memes is the “loser guy” subject, a pathetic guy to be laughed at, because he is such a weirdo. Because of the female association she has with the music, she said “The memes are kind of odd to me… It was stuff everyone was listening to.” Widmer is glad more women are coming back as Weezer fans in the 2020s. Kate saw Weezer on the Hella Mega Tour in 2021 at T-Mobile Park in Seattle and noticed “a lot of people were in their 20s… like me, a lot of kids came with their parents.” She also said the crowd was a pretty even gender split. So it seems like they draw equal numbers of female and male fans now, why isn’t this reflected in the memes? That may be because the male stereotype already exists, and is so absurd it's very easy to poke fun at.
Larry Leonard- Lead Singer of Calamity Cowboy, A Silly Guy, Wears A Really Fashionable Hat On Stage
Larry, a listener of Weezer’s since he heard the smash hit “Buddy Holly” in middle school, feels Weezer is still relevant. “The influence is there in power pop groups… somewhere along the line someone listened to Pinkerton (1996).” However, he also has issues with the band’s interpretation of the memes,“They’ve leaned so much into their memetic status there they kind of shot themselves in the foot… even they don’t take themselves too seriously.” He describes the “in jokes'' Weezer has slipped into their newer songs, “they’re obviously on the Weezer Subreddit.” Leonard believes “They are trying to maintain relevance through this meme status” because, as he puts it “the [new] material is not good.” He also stresses how Weezer was “baby’s first band” for many people. It launched him into other power pop bands like Fountains of Wayne and Big Star.
Pippin Bridgeman - Student, Aspiring Musician, Has Cool Hair
“My mom introduced me to Weezer.” Like many young people, she grew to appreciate the music as she got older. “I became… not an incel… but the music really spoke to me”. “Incel”, which means involuntary celibate, refers to a male-dominated internet subculture based on the idea that they can’t find a romantic partner, even though they desire one. They often spout hateful messages, and are often connoted online with the memes described throughout this article. Pippin believes nowadays people see Weezer as “Deservedly so, the assholes that they are.” She goes on to describe the “Weezer Race Chart”, a chart that notes the different races of female subjects in Weezer songs. Bridgeman also references the lyric “My girl's got a big mouth, with which she blabbers a lot” from the song No One Else, off the blue album. She says “The song is really funny- how bad it is.” Like Larry Leonard, Bridgeman says “It’s dumb that they try to appeal to the meme… it comes off as grasping onto any relevance… which is kinda lame.” She closes off with “Their music is good, but if they weren’t such shitty people, they wouldn’t be memed so hard.”
So. Can we look past the meme? I think yes, we can, if we acknowledge the harm the band has done. The questionable lyrics are enough to turn most people off entirely. While every interview-e mentioned the meme reputation as being one of the band’s biggest connotations, it cemented them into eternal rock glory. It is hard to name another band of the era that holds this much relevance- groups like Yellowcard and Presidents of the United States that may sound similar don’t even come close to Weezer in terms of cultural relevance. As for the question “Is Weezer even good anymore?”, I think most are in agreement, “All My Favorite Songs” from 2020’s Ok Human is not “Buddy Holly”, it’s not even “Across The Sea” from Pinkerton. They may have traveled too far from their original sound to hold the mass of the fanbase from their earlier hit records, but can’t we forgive them in that aspect? They are certainly not the only band to follow this trend. We are far too deep into the Weezer-verse to turn back now. This leads to our final question, is this pointless? No, because if there is one thing to take from these interviews, it's that listening to Weezer is good character building. As long as we can recognize the incel facets of the band and not perpetuate some of the damaging notions, we can comfortably rock out to Weezer.