The Blue Album > Pinkerton
According to Last Week's Poll
This issue came up the other day, when I reviewed Weezer's awful new album, the Red Album.
I was mentioning how Weezer is one of those groups that's managed to coast for years and years on the back of one really good album, i.e. the Blue Album. Of course, someone in the comments section had to counter that Weezer didn't have one good album, but two, and that Pinkerton is even better than the Blue Album.
I don't deny that Pinkerton is a good album, and I should have mentioned it as being one of the reasons so many people still give a shit about Weezer to this day. But I also don't think it's on the same level as the Blue Album.
I remember back when all there was was the Blue Album and Pinkerton - back when Pinkerton was mostly regarded as the album that ethered their career. I also remember back when Pinkerton began to develop a cult following, on the Internets back in the late '90s.
Rivers Cuomo just kinda up and disappeared for a long-ass time between Pinkerton and the Green Album, and supposedly he was working on a bachelor's degree at Harvard - which I don't think he completed until fairly recently, even though he'd been working on it since I was damn near in middle school.
But then rumors began to emerge that he'd had some sort of weird surgery on his leg, and that he spent something ridonkulous like two years in a dark bedroom, growing a beard and jerking off to Asian pr0n. And if you look at Pinkerton in light of said, I think it does take on an added degree of... shall we say, emotional depth.
That being said, I still think the Blue Album has the better songs and the better production. Last week's poll had to do with whether or not most people agree with me, or if they've drunk the Pinkerton Kool-Aid. Here's the results:
Better Weezer album?
- The Blue Album (108 votes - 68.4%)
- Pinkerton (50 votes - 31.6%)
And wouldn't you know, this is one of those rare instances in which most people agree with me about something, with the Blue Album ending up with more than twice as many votes as Pinkerton.
Granted this can hardly be viewed as a huge, unexpected victory, in the sense that the Blue Album has always been the most popular album of the two. You can still hear joints from it on alternative stations to this day. Meanwhile, when's the last time a station played "El Scorcho?"
But this is, after all, the Internets, i.e. where Pinkerton developed its cult following in the first place. I wonder if we did this same poll, say, eight years ago (did I really just type that?) would Pinkerton have won. Maybe a lot of its late '90s-era stans have found better things to do in the interim.
