Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Say It Ain't So (1994)
I've got a complicated relationship with the band Weezer. (I suspect I'm not alone.) I'm a big fan of their first two albums, but everything they've done since then I have no use for.
Weezer came out of the gate in 1994 with a near-perfect debut album. It's self-titled but dubbed "The Blue Album" because the cover is a picture of the four members of the band standing in front of a blue background; it's very similar to the cover of the Feelies' debut Crazy Rhythms, which came out in 1980, but apparently the band had never heard of it.
Singer-guitarist Rivers Cuomo had moved to LA from Connecticut in 1989 with his high school band Avant Garde, a metal band which then split up. Cuomo moved in with drummer Patrick Wilson and his roommate Matt Sharp. Cuomo grew interested in bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth and formed a short-lived band with Wilson. Eventually, Cuomo recorded a bunch of demos and formed Weezer in 1992 with Wilson, Sharp on bass and Jason Cropper on guitar. The band signed with Geffen Records in June 1993 and went into the studio with producer Ric Ocasek (yes, that Ric Ocasek).
The recording had some drama, as Cropper learned his girlfriend was pregnant and began acting so erratically that the band asked him to leave. He left after recording was finished and was replaced by Brian Bell, but Cuomo re-recorded all of Cropper's guitar parts.
The Blue Album was released in May 1994, full of shiny power pop gems written from an underdog perspective. The first single, "Undone - The Sweater Song," became a huge hit thanks to the Spike Jonze-directed video that featured the band playing while a bunch of dogs ran around them. The second single, "Buddy Holly," had an even more popular video, also directed by Jonze, that featured the band playing at Arnold's Drive-In from the '70s sitcom Happy Days. Apparently, Anson "Potsie" Williams was against footage of him in the video, but David Geffen got him to STFU. The video was also included in the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM, which helped boost its popularity.
"Say It Ain't So" was the third single, written by Cuomo about an incident when he was in high school. He saw a bottle of beer in the fridge and thought his mother and stepfather would split up because his mother and father's marriage ended because the father was an alcoholic.
"Flip on the telly/Wrestle with Jimmy/Something is bubbling/Behind my back/The bottle is ready to blow/Say it ain't so/Your drug is a heartbreaker/Say it ain't so/My love is a life taker."
As it turned out, once the song became a hit, Cuomo's estranged father sent him a fax asking him to get in touch. The dad explained that he wasn't an alcoholic, which was confirmed by Cuomo's mother. Cuomo had a photo growing up of his dad holding a Heineken and just assumed he was an alcoholic, so the song was based on a misunderstanding. That said, it's still a great song.
"Dear daddy, I write you/In spite of years of silence/You've cleaned up, found Jesus/Things are good, or so I hear/This bottle of Steven's awakens ancient feelings/Like father, stepfather/The son is drowning in the flood/Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."
The song builds slowly, laying teen Cuomo's emotions bare as he implores his stepdad not to make the same mistake he believed his dad made. It culminates in an epic guitar solo that calls back to the metal he was listening to at the time of the incident (which wasn't really an incident).
The song wasn't as big of a hit as the previous two singles, but it got plenty of play on alternative radio and cemented the band as a force to be reckoned with. The Blue Album was a huge hit, going to #16 on the Billboard 200 and eventually selling 3 million copies in the U.S. alone. As he worked on demos for the band's next album, Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University. He had started working on a space-themed rock opera called Songs from the Black Hole, but abandoned that after he started attending Harvard.
While Cuomo was writing the next Weezer album, Sharp and Wilson started a band called The Rentals and released a debut album called Return of the Rentals in October 1995. The second Weezer album, Pinkerton, came out in September 1996 and was a flop at the time. It was darker and less poppy than the band's debut and many fans didn't get it, but it later developed a cult following and is now considered one of their best albums.
After the Pinkerton tour, the band went on hiatus. The other members worked on other projects and Cuomo returned to Harvard, but then took a break to focus on writing songs. he formed a new band with different Boston musicians and played some shows, but abandoned that project. He then had a band called Homie with Wilson, Sharp and a few others; they released a song for the soundtrack of the 1998 movie Meet the Deedles. Cuomo, Bell and Wilson got together in Los Angeles in February 1998 to work on the next Weezer album; Sharp left the band and was replaced by Mikey Welsh. After months of rehearsals and demos, productivity declined and the band went their separate ways. Cuomo reportedly grew depressed but eventually wrote 121 songs by 1999.
Stung by the criticism of the personal lyrics on Pinkerton, Cuomo opted to write catchier songs for the next album, which was also self-titled but called the Green Album because of its cover background; it was released in 2001. "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun" were hits and the album went to #4 on the Billboard 200. The band has released 12 albums since then that have been pretty successful, but nothing I've heard from them has moved me like the first two albums. Their cover of Toto's "Africa" may be a crime against humanity. The band keeps touring and doing well and I'm happy for them, but I'm content to stick to those first two Weezer albums and leave it at that.
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