Let’s say it’s 1994. Kurt Cobain is dead. Grunge is over, if it was ever real to begin with, but “alternative” music is part of the mainstream in ways it never was before. Artists like Beck, Green Day, The Breeders, Nine Inch Nails and Pavement might not have had much in common in terms of musical genealogy or ambition, but they held similar symbolic places in their fans’ minds—this was music that made you feel like you were part of something smaller, different, more personal, less perfect. This band could be your life.

Then there was Weezer. On the one hand, they were the final boss of relatability—outcasts buried in comic books (“In the Garage”), last picked for dodgeball, forgotten by their parents (“Say It Ain’t So”) and shunned by their peers (“The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”). On the other, their music could be as polished and ruthlessly controlled as anything we call “pop”, every hook and chorus and sweetly harmonious chord change engineered for maximum pleasure—no accidents, no jazz. That they were just another Los Angeles band trying to get a record deal, as opposed to more home-grown, scene-oriented artists like Nirvana or Green Day, made a kind of sense, too. Being “alternative” was just the first step to being mainstream. Listening to the demos and practice sessions from various reissues, including the 2024 30th-anniversary deluxe edition of the album, only reinforces the point. Even the seemingly off-the-cuff guitar break in “Buddy Holly” was planned pretty much to the note months before they went into the studio.

As polite as they looked, there was something eerie about them, too. “No One Else” (as in “I want a girl who will laugh for…”), “Holiday”, “Buddy Holly”’s fantasy of a more innocent—but also more rigid, retrograde—world. Like The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Weezer captured male adolescent yearning so intense it became abstract, detached from the messy complexities that made human relationships so unpredictable. If they couldn’t have the girl of their dreams, they’d build her in a lab.

Rivers Cuomo was a Kiss fan, and you could tell by listening, if not by looking: Weezer was, at every turn, hero music, the sound of winners made for people who grew up feeling like losers. That they became one of the most famous and cultishly beloved rock bands of their generation made sense, especially when paired with the rise of the internet: Suddenly, you could embrace your individualistic geekdom and build community at the same time. Huge, romantic and totally uncynical, Weezer was the soundtrack to once-distinct subcultures melting down and remoulding into something shinier and smoother.

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