Music
-
And what a great name for that concept. ↩︎
-
And, in one of my favorite pop culture moments of 2023 so far, The Christmas Song is featured over the end credits of the incredible sixth episode (“Fishes”) of season 2 of The Bear. I raised my arms in triumph. ↩︎
# 🎵 An hour-long Oasis playlist
After getting hooked on @adam ’s St. Vincent playlist and the rest of their “Finest Hour” series in which they “compile [their] favorite of an artist’s songs into a playlist not a minute longer than 1 hour in duration1,” I decided to take the format for a spin myself, starting with Oasis.
Gtting this playlist under an hour was an excruciating task. I had to cut a dozen or more songs that I consider among my favorite by any artist. Initially, I had almost four hours. But I’m proud of what I ended up with. I love having the constraint of an hour… takes me back to the days of recording cassettes or burning CDs and being by their capacity.
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit.
–Igor Stravinsky
Now Playing: Liam Gallagher & John Squire 🎵
The 5 Best Weezer Songs Ever
Today, in his Welcome to Hell World newsletter, Luke O’Neil posted an impressive roundup of “musicians and music writers and other friends” takes on the top five Weezer songs of all time. I was not asked to participate because a) I am not a musician, b) I am not a music writer, and c) I am not a friend of Luke O’Neil’s (which, if this particular newsletter post is any indication, is a shame). But, never one to shy away from sharing my Weezer opinions with anyone who would listen (either willingly or unwillingly), I decided not to let that stop me from putting together my own contribution.
I started this list with about 20 songs that I consider my all-time favorites. From there, I tried to eliminate first the ones that I hold in such high esteem for purely or at least mostly sentimental reasons. I’ll write some of those up as honorable mentions later. So, in sticking to the prompt, here are what I consider to be the five best Weezer songs of all time.
5 - The Christmas Song This is kind of a stand-in for a whole mini-era of songs that Weezer released during their hiatus between Pinkerton and the Green album, but I think it’s the best of the bunch. I got super into Weezer at kind of an awkward time… I got extremely into the Blue album right after Pinkerton was released (I’d of course heard the singles but got the CD for Christmas ‘97 and fell completely in love. I got into Pinkerton then at some point maybe a year after, but by the time I was completely obsessed with Weezer, they’d already been through the failure of that sophomore album and Matt had already left the band and they had kind of disappeared. As it happens, this was also around the time that I had my first access to the internet at home. This opened up a whole world of lore building and mythologizing around my new (and first) favorite band. The message boards were on fire with speculation about whether they would return and discussions of what was so great about the first two albums, etc. Weezer included an amazing cover of Velouria on the Pixies tribute album in 1999, then, in the summer of 2000, some demos and live recordings (collectively known as the “Summer Songs of 2000” started showing up on those message boards (“Too Late to Try” is the first I remember hearing, which was in my original list of 20, but didn’t make the final cut). It was an extremely exciting time in Weezer fandom as we realized then that there would be more new music from Weezer, but the recordings weren’t the best quality, and while it was thrilling to have new music, none of these songs really hold up or stand out in the overall Weezer catalog. But The Christmas Song, released at the end of 2000 for KROQ’s annual Christmas compilation, does stand up against the very best of Weezer1.
4 - Jamie Incredible song. I picked it up on the DGC Rarities, Vol. 1 CD where I was first introduced to Teenage Fanclub. Like The Christmas Song, this is the chosen representative of a group of songs, in this case the Blue- and Pink-era B-sides. If this were a list of the 20 best Weezer songs, all of the B-sides from the Blue and Pink eras would be on the list, but since it’s just five, Jamie is my favorite of the bunch, at least today.
3 - My Name is Jonas I can’t think of an opener that’s better than this one. The perfect song to open my favorite album of all-time. The awesome finger-picked acoustic intro (shoutout to Jason Cropper for appearing in 2/5 songs on my top 5!), the build up to “THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME” and the harmonica sneaking in there. What a song. And I don’t think there’s anything else quite like this one in the whole Weezer catalog.
2 - El Scorcho Lyrics are pretty uncomfortable in retrospect (Pinkerton, in general), but that chorus is just perfect and so so singable. This is driving in my first car – a powder blue 1986 Chevy Celebrity – singing at the top of my lungs.
1 - Holiday / Only in Dreams I cheated! BUT, it’s really the way these two fit together that I love so much. The end of Holiday–“Let’s go away, let’s go away in a heartbeat…"–into that bass line of Only In Dreams is probably my favorite minute-or-so stretch of music I’ve ever heard. Just as the blue album has a perfect opening, it’s got the perfect closing.
🎵 I’m beginning to think that the theme song for H2O: Just Add Water has taken up permanent residence in my head. This is my life now.
The things we do for Rock 'n Roll...
“I shit in a bag,” he reveals, with a hint of pride. “Because I had to go! And there was nowhere to go. And I’m convinced the gods of rock said, ‘That kid’s a true believer. We’ve got to put the thumb on the scale for the old Weeze.' “
Brian Hiatt at Rolling Stone: “The Strange Birth and Near Death of Weezer”