James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 2: The ‘Blue’ Album

Day 2 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge and thus today’s album of the nineties must begin with the letter ‘B’

And I may have taken a bit of liberty with today’s choice.

Because it doesn’t really begin with ‘B’ at all.

Because today’s album is:

B is for The ‘Blue’ Album

Weezer’s 1994 debut was actually just called Weezer. So it should really be filed under ‘W’. But Weezer have subsequently released no less than five other ‘eponymous’ albums, and consequently they tend to be known by the colour of the ‘sleeve’. So it is not uncommon to refer to this effort as The ‘Blue’ Album and, as I already has something lined up for ‘W’ it was becoming quite a difficult choice.

I did have a few options for ‘B’ too, and it was a bit of wrench to not include any of them, in favour of this impostor, but The ‘Blue’ Album was, without question, one of my favourite albums of the nineties and I would have selected it happily for ‘B’ or ‘W’. In the end, the other album I had selected for ‘W’ outranked the other album I had lined up for ‘B’ and so Weezer find themselves here.

In the end, none of this matters, so we can all relax about a ‘W’ album being filed under ‘B’.

And this is really a great collection of songs. There is some debate about whether this, or their follow-up album, Pinkerton, is better. ‘Blue’ enjoyed far more commercial success, but Pinkerton has gained a cult following over the years. What is without doubt is that both are better than any of the eleven ensuing  records put out by Weezer, and no doubt will be better than their upcoming 14th studio album too.

That said, I do quite like most of Weezer’s output, and there are plenty of ear-worms amongst their later efforts.

But in terms of complete albums, ‘Blue’ and Pinkerton stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Ultimately ‘Blue’ is my favourite of the two, probably for reasons of nostalgia if nothing else. I was fifteen when it came out. And it didn’t leave my CD player for weeks after I purchased it.

I saw Weezer tour this album in the nineties, and, though I went to a lot of gigs back then, theirs was one of the stand-out shows from that era. I then forgot about Weezer for quite a long time but saw them again at Wembley Arena in 2017. I bought tickets to that show on the basis of this album and this album alone. I then panicked and spent the weeks leading up to the concert ‘revising’ the rest of their back catalogue.

On the day though, they mostly just played this.

Which was fine with me.

It is hard to pick a favourite track off this album, because there really are no fillers, but the only song I can possibly leave you with is the single that made me buy the CD in the first place.

Which is ‘Buddy Holly’.

The video is pretty awesome too.