So why is Weezer’s Pinkerton on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
I’ve had kind of a long, strange relationship with Pinkerton.
I was only vaguely aware that Weezer even had a “second” album out when it was released during my momentous, chaotic, and rather exciting college senior year and early post-college adventures.
When it did finally pop up on my radar, I went through stretches of not taking it all that seriously, punctuated with phases of deep obsession followed by other time periods (counter-phases?) where I questioned that obsession.
I still don’t entirely know why. I tried to articulate it better than that and, full disclosure, I just wasn’t able to. I can’t think of any other piece of pop culture in which I’ve had something close to the same experience.
And then when it came time to figure out how to classify and rank Pinkerton for this here best 1,000 albums project, that long history came rushing back. “What do I think of it now?” is a question I’d find myself asking more than I’d like to admit.
And I’d have to be careful during such times too as it’s surprisingly easy for that kind of question to tip over to questioning every album in this kind of ludicrously crazy project, and then that can tip over to questioning what I think of everything.
Like pop tarts. Or the color green. Or Why We’re All Here and What It All Means and The Farthest Thing From Earth: What’s Beyond That, Then?
It’s a lot. Pinkerton will push you, prod you, try to break you a little bit.
But… it’s also amazing. It’s worthy of that self-torture.
Or almost worthy. Maybe. I think.
Okay, enough Rivers Cuomo-style navel-gazing. Let’s dive in.
My entry point to Pinkerton and the song that always helps me reset to the fact that this thing really is a masterpiece is the second track, “Getchoo.”
I relay a miserable college breakup and my obsession with the line, “This is my mistake, let me make it good,” in the best 1,000 albums ever piece on R.E.M.’s Green (#180). If the breakup had happened a year or 18 months later, I very likely would have instead gravitated to:
This is beginning to hurt
This is beginning to be serious
It’s vintage Cuomo and Weezer, so personal yet universal, and most importantly: deep-wired catchy and rocking as hell.
Overall, Pinkerton sinks under my skin on an almost hypnotic (and even ever so slightly troubling?) level in its darker and more raw production versus Weezer’s debut “blue” album (#62).
But the incredible feat – and this is shared across all of Weezer’s huge pile of quality albums they’ve produced over the last 30 years and counting – is how [REDACTED] beautiful Cuomo’s melodies are, while additionally the guitar hooks are as hooky as anything you’ll find in the history of rock and roll.
I didn’t think about what the album title, Pinkerton, meant for many years and then would occasionally think of it when “the Pinkertons” would inevitably show up in Western TV shows and movies, hunting down a bad guy or trying to protect some cargo out in the lawless stretches west of the Mississippi.
It was therefore a surprise to learn the following, via Wikipedia:
The title comes from the character BF Pinkerton from Giacomo Puccini‘s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, whom Cuomo described as an “asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star”. Like Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton views Japanese culture from the perspective of an outsider who considers Japan fragile and sensual.
This also ties into the snowy Japanese scene that forms Pinkerton’s cover art.
Sidenote that I went to the Puccini museum in Lucca, Italy quite recently where, sadly, there was no Weezer exhibit to check out.
“Why Bother?” is vintage Weezer, and could have slotted as one of the blue album’s standout tracks, with perhaps a slightly sunshinier sound production sheen.
“El Scorcho,” on the other hand, is far odder in a way that I am one thousand percent with. I can absolutely see how with this one – as the band’s first single release off of Pinkerton after the worldwide sensation of their debut album – a lot of people didn’t get it and were like, “I thought these were the “Buddy Holly” guys?”
Much like Pinkerton as a whole, “El Scorcho” rewards repeat listens. It’s really a perfect song in terms of its surprisingly intricate song construction: we get the highly unusual guitar riff at the jump – kind of a dark carnival vibe, with apologies for stealing the term from all y’all ICP-loving Juggalos out there – and then the verse builds into an arena-shaking chorus that the band would later capitalize on via hit songs on subsequent albums. But then we get a masterful fast-paced hard rock section that hits perfectly in the song’s mid-section.
From there, “El Scorcho” triumphantly pushes on in its singular, let your weirdo flag fly way.
Lyrically, the strikingly oddball yet confessional vibe is also unlike anything I’ve ever come across.
I asked you to go to the Green Day concert
You said you never heard of them
How cool is that?
So I went to your room and read your diary
“El Scorcho” signifies the planting of the Nerd Rock flag deep into planet Earth and behold, Weezer now rules over all of us, benevolently.
Rivers Cuomo is so adept, even early in his career, at changing up the sound and tone of his voice from song to song. It’s that ability to inject variety into his music that has helped Weezer to stay relevant across four different decades and counting. Another artist from a very different genre who shares this expertise: Eminem.
Anyway, I was thinking about this while listening to “The Good Life,” which is… let’s say good.
After an album of raw guitars and lots of fuzzy amplifier effects, Pinkerton closes on the wonderful acoustic rock of “Butterfly.”
It’s a nice cooldown after a hell of a ride and journey – both through the track listings and with my long process of figuring what the hell I think of the album as a whole.
Some stats & info about Weezer – Pinkerton
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Alternative Rock, SoCal Bands, Pop Punk
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Pinkerton released? 1996
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #34 out of 1,000
Weezer’s Pinkerton on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Weezer’s Pinkerton that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
This is beginning to hurt – this is beginning to be serious.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.