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Plus One
The 11 best Weezer songs
The Gathering World Tour is coming to UK stages in May 2027. Get yourself ready with the best Weezer tracks, ranked
Bursting out of Los Angeles at the height of grunge in the early ‘90s, few bands have managed to turn awkwardness into an art form quite as successfully as Weezer
Since their arrival with 1994’s genre-defining self-titled debut – better known as The Blue Album – Rivers Cuomo and co. have always been a band operating entirely in their own lane. Marrying fuzzed-up guitars and colossal power-pop hooks with Beach Boys harmonies, earnestly confessional lyrics and an endearing streak of nerdiness, over the last three decades they’ve transformed from four unassuming outsiders into unlikely alt. rock superstars.
Trading in their quirky charm for something messier, darker and infinitely more vulnerable on 1996’s Pinkerton, Weezer’s second album set the pace for a band who have rarely stayed in one place for long since. Bouncing between crunchy guitar anthems, glossy pop experiments, sprawling rock operas and orchestral introspection, their endless evolution has sometimes been met by acclaim, sometimes by bewilderment, but one thing’s for sure – it’s always taken place on their own terms.
Through it all, Cuomo’s gift for writing melodies capable of lodging themselves inside your brain has remained virtually untouchable, and it’s once again on fine display with their latest colourful chapter, The Gold Album. With a run of UK headline shows announced for May 2027 to celebrate, ahead of their return to the stage we’ve narrowed their legacy down to 11 songs that best capture the strange, sincere and endlessly infectious magic of Weezer.
11. ‘Foolish Father‘
(Everything Will Be Alright In The End, 2014)
There’s always been a deep vein of insecurity running beneath Weezer’s power-pop sheen. A towering late album highlight driven by crunchy guitars, ‘Foolish Father’ finds Cuomo reckoning with the damage passed between generations. Whilst those wounds have haunted his songwriting since the band’s earliest days (just take a listen to ‘Say It Ain’t So’), it finds the frontman reflecting on that anger with hard-earned perspective, moving past resentment to a place of understanding and acceptance. Culminating with a children’s choir repeating the phrase that gives Everything Will Be Alright In The End its name, it transforms years of complex, tangled family trauma into something unexpectedly hopeful. An ode to finally making peace with the past, it’s one of the most heartfelt hidden gems in Weezer’s catalogue.
10. ‘Shine Again‘
(The Gold Album, 2026)
Taking their signature sugary hooks and dragging them through a thick layer of desert-rock fuzz, the arrival of ‘Shine Again’ earlier this year proved that Weezer are well and truly back. An uplifting power-pop anthem driven by colossal guitars, there is no greater statement of the four piece’s renewed confidence coming into album twelve, and that has a lot to do with the collaborative nature of the process. Written entirely by drummer Patrick Wilson – his first sole writing credit on a Weezer single – ‘Shine Again’ feels like the perfect introduction to a chapter centered on the band as a creative unit. A song about rediscovering the light within yourself, it’s also proof that some of Weezer’s brightest moments are still to come.
9. ‘Jacked Up‘
(The White Album, 2016)
If you’re looking for fuzzed-up guitars this might not be your bag, but this piano-led masterclass is a prime example of how comfortable Cuomo and co. have become when stepping outside their classic sound. Almost completely devoid of crunching riffs, ‘Jacked Up’ is somewhat of a dark horse amongst the sun-soaked power-pop that dominates the White Album, its restless pulse and soaring falsettos building towards an almighty eruption of pain and heartbreak. Found on an album inspired by the strange characters, romance and sunshine of Los Angeles’ Westside, its frantic build and hopeless desperation hint at the loneliness that hits once the music dies down and the party ends. Awkward, yearning and just a little melodramatic: it’s classic Weezer, simply dressed in a slightly different outfit than we’re used to.
8. ‘Across The Sea‘
(Pinkerton, 1996)
Sitting dead centre on an album that serves as Rivers Cuomo’s grippingly raw emotional diary, flung open for the entire world to inspect, ‘Across The Sea’ brings us some of the most uncomfortably revealing pages of Pinkerton. Inspired by a letter the frontman had received from a young fan in Japan whilst lonely and isolated at Harvard, its lyrics depict Cuomo becoming dangerously entangled as he fixates on a stranger thousands of miles away. Beginning with gentle piano before guitars steadily build, every escalation seems to mirror his spiralling obsession, culminating in one of the album’s most gut-wrenching emotional releases. Whilst its brutally unfiltered lyrics remain complicated and uncomfortable 30 years later; there’s a strangely endearing pull in its messiness. An album that was initially rejected by the industry and fans alike before becoming hugely influential upon the waves of emo that followed, nowhere is Weezer’s vulnerability more exposed than right here.
7. ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived‘
(The Red Album, 2008)
It takes some confidence to name a song ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’, so it makes sense that this is one of the most ludicrously ambitious tracks in Weezer’s arsenal. A near-six-minute mini rock opera that darts between rap, baroque dramatics, blistering hard rock, choral passages and takes countless other twists and turns along the way, it’s a recipe for pure chaos. Described by Cuomo as moving through 11 different musical themes, nodding towards everyone from Nirvana and Aerosmith to classical music, the result should be an absolute disaster, but that’s precisely where its charm lies. A band with a penchant for occupying the unconventional intersection between technical songwriting and gleeful absurdity, ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’ pushes both of those impulses to near breaking point. Grandiose, ridiculous and genuinely impressive, nobody else could have pulled it off quite like this.
6. ‘A Little Bit Of Love‘
(SZNZ:Spring, 2022)
For all their neuroses, heartbreak and self-deprecation, sometimes Weezer are at their best when they simply allow a little sunshine through. Of course, they serve that feeling up in hearty doses on hits like ‘Beverly Hills’ and ‘Island In The Sun’, but there’s something about the breezy acoustic strums and buoyant melodies of ‘A Little Bit Of Love’ that feel utterly irresistible when blasted out on a warm day with no agenda ahead. Released to usher in their ambitious four-part SZNZ project, Spring was the first of four EPs released around the changing seasons throughout 2022. With its first instalment indented to capture a “happy, chill, stress-free” mood according to Cuomo, after building a career on overthinking almost everything, there’s something refreshing about hearing Weezer embrace a more uncomplicated, optimistic outlook on life. Sweet whilst never tipping entirely into saccharine, it’s an ode to dusting yourself off, showing yourself kindness, and trying again – which is something we all need to hear every now and again.
5. ‘Hash Pipe‘
(The Green Album, 2001)
After Pinkerton’s lacklustre commercial reception sent Weezer into retreat, there was no guarantee that any eventual return would recapture their former magic. Enter ‘Hash Pipe’: three minutes of crunching riffs, awkward swagger and delightfully weird rock’n’roll silliness. The first single from 2001’s Green Album, it jettisoned much of Pinkerton’s bruised introspection in favour of something far more immediate, punchy and bizarre, its stabbing guitar pattern impossible to ditch once it burrows into your skull. Written by Cuomo during the same night as future Maladroit track ‘Dope Nose’, it was initially offered to Ozzy Osbourne before it became a Weezer hit. Thankfully, the Black Sabbath legend turned it down, or else it’s unlikely we would have ended up with an iconic music video filled with sumo wrestlers. After a rocky period, ‘Hash Pipe’ announced that Weezer were back – and still gloriously weird.
4. ‘The World Has Turned And Left Me Here‘
(The Blue Album, 1994)
When you think about The Blue Album, it’s likely that vision is dominated by gargantuan hooks, fuzzy guitar tones and ridiculous music videos, but the real genius of Weezer’s full-length debut lay in how effectively it disguised emotional torment as immaculate power-pop. ‘The World Has Turned And Left Me Here’ is one of its finest examples. Following directly from the possessive jealousy of ‘No One Else’, it features the same narrator wondering why his girlfriend has now abandoned him, overflowing with lovelorn melodrama and wistful melodies. With the protagonist obsessing over memories of something he helped destroy, it encapsulates everything that made the Blue Album so influential. Inescapable melodies, lyrics centered on painfully specific insecurities, and a sickening sweetness tangled up with the ugliest emotions, it’s a shining example of Cuomo’s willingness to make himself the punchline.
3. ‘El Scorcho‘
(Pinkerton, 1996)
There’s something almost aggressively uncool about ‘El Scorcho’. Perhaps the purest encapsulation of Pinkerton’sawkward charm, the 1996 single begins with the sound of water being gargled before unfolding into four minutes of pure hopeless infatuation polished off with a scattering of obscure cultural references. Delivered with all the composure of someone blurting out every thought that should have remained safely inside their head, it’s a gloriously uncomfortable ode to romantic incompetence, jerking between loose verses and huge bursts of distorted power-pop with a relentless chaos. Whilst Pinkerton’s lead single undoubtedly struggled commercially at the time of its release, failing to capture the same MTV support enjoyed by The Blue Album videos, time has proven far kinder to ‘El Scorcho’. A cult classic and a cornerstone of confessional alternative rock for very good reason, thirty years on there’s still nothing else quite like it.
2. ‘Say It Ain’t So‘
(The Blue Album, 1994)
Opening with one of the most instantly recognisable guitar lines of the decade before exploding into a chorus built for thousands of people to scream together, ‘Say It Ain’t So’ rightfully remains one of Weezer’s most iconic tracks to this day. The anxious anthem was written after a young Cuomo returned home one day to discover beer in the refrigerator, who – believing alcohol had contributed to his biological father leaving the family – subsequently feared his stepfather might disappear too. Laying the foundations for a track about abandonment, inherited damage and the terror of watching familiar patterns emerge, that raw emotion is wrapped inside perfect power-pop melodies, coming together to form one of the most universally cathartic songs ever written.
1. ‘Only In Dreams‘
(The Blue Album, 1994)
Eight minutes long, built around a hypnotic bassline, and ending with an instrumental crescendo that seems determined to swallow the entire Blue Album whole, there is quite simply nothing else in Weezer’s catalogue remotely like ‘Only In Dreams’. On the surface, it’s perhaps the ultimate Cuomo tale of unrequited love – shy, yearning and paralysed by his own imagination. However, since its release the frontman has suggested that the song is actually connected to his artistic process rather than a romantic partner, citing his fascination with Phish and Trey Anastasio’s transcendent live improvisations as inspiration for the melancholic epic. With the album’s producer Ric Ocasek allowing the track to retain the sprawling jams he trimmed from plenty of other songs, the Blue Album closer gradually climbs from hushed longing into a euphoric explosion of intertwining guitars. Heart shattering, enlightening and theatrical as hell, this is Weezer in their most perfect, emotional gutting form.
