10 Bands That Never Topped Their 1st Album

With their first album, Weezer laid the groundwork for pretty much every wimpy kid with dreams of putting emo lyrics to catchy songs.

It was truly a stroke of genius to enlist Ric Ocasek from The Cars to produce this set of well-crafted oddball pop songs. Under his guidance, frontman Rivers Cuomo's hyper-specific lyrics about his very geeky interests and issues were offset by an absolutely gigantic wall of guitars played in downstrokes only.

Ocasek helped the band stick to only a few primary elements that gave the album a lean formula of thick guitars, sugary choruses and the odd synth squiggle. That, and Spike Jonze's iconic videos for singles Buddy Holly and Undone - The Sweater Song, turned the band into an overnight sensation.

It somewhat overshadowed Cuomo's valid ambitions as a serious songwriter and it set him down the road that would lead to the band's much rawer follow-up. For many fans, Pinkerton stands as the band's best work, but at the time of its release, the self-produced album was not what many expected or hoped for.

The melodies were still there, but they were buried underneath layers of unedited guitar feedback, musical counterpoints bordering on bum notes, and painfully personal lyrics.

Adding a Pinkerton song to a mixtape might either lead to eternal love or a restraining order, but even those 50/50 odds look good compared to the results of later albums like Make Believe and Raditude.

In many ways, their mediocre lows can be blamed on the stunning highs of their debut.