10 Musicians You Love For The Wrong Album

8. Weezer - The Blue Album

What You SHOULD Love Them For: Pinkerton

There are few albums that have undergone such a massive transformation in how they are perceived as Pinkerton by Weezer. This was the band’s sophomore effort, but both sales and critical reviews suggested that it was an absolute disaster compared to their underground debut smash, The Blue Album.

Since then, revisionism and word of mouth, largely facilitated by the dawn of the internet, have led to its acceptance as a cult classic, but outside of the group’s fanbase, it is still largely ignored compared to the success of their first effort or later releases like The Green Album or even Make Believe.

Pinkerton was self-produced by the band themselves, and while that rougher sound was initially used as a stick with which they were mercilessly beaten, retrospectively thinking, it might actually be the record’s greatest asset.

Songs like El Scorcho and Getchoo have a bristling, visceral quality to them and lyrically Rivers Cuomo is at his playful, painfully awkward, dorky best. Pinkerton is an unfairly chastised ugly duckling, and it deserves to be seen for the magnificent garage rock swan that it is.