10 Greatest Feel Good Rock Songs
9. Buddy Holly - Weezer
When Weezer was first making it up the ranks, rock was in dire need of a pick me up. For the last five years, the entire rock landscape had been dealing with morose subject matters from the grunge scene, which got all too real once Kurt Cobain took his own life in 1994. On the other side of the spectrum, Weezer's brand of nerdy pop rock ended up being just the right thing to wake everybody up.
Though Weezer were known to dip into darker subject matter on songs like "Say It Ain't So," the track "Buddy Holly" was the first sign that rock was going to be OK. The song might have a retro twist due to its subject matter, but the amount of crunch put into this song gives it the power to stand on its own as an alternative rock song. The simple premise of Rivers Cuomo looking like Buddy Holly may sound dumb, but the hooks are so bouncy that it doesn't even matter.
From this song forward, Weezer had become the new faces of rock and roll, with Rivers Cuomo embracing his geek aesthetic to the nth degree. "Buddy Holly" might have a bit of '90s cheese attached to it, but when it comes to rock and roll love songs, the story of nerdy romance has never sounded so good.