‘500 Greatest Albums’ Podcast: The Full Story of Weezer’s Blue Album, in Their Own Words
Weezer’s self-titled debut, a.k.a. the Blue Album, is one of the most enduring artifacts of the alt-rock age, winning teenage hearts in generation after generation. Released in 1994, it’s the geeky, equally angsty little brother of Pearl Jam’s Ten and Nirvana’s Nevermind, somehow both more sincere and more ironic than its predecessors, and in some ways bolder in its disregard for the old rules of rock.
To some suspicious music fans at the time, it seemed like Weezer emerged out of nowhere, popping up fully formed with a major-label debut. In a way, Weezer did come out of nowhere. They exist only because their brilliant oddball of a frontman, Rivers Cuomo, somehow managed to go from frustrated metal shredder to quirky alt-rock mastermind in the space of just a couple years — and then met just the right collaborators along the way.
In the latest episode of our Amazon Original podcast Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums, Cuomo and his bandmates from that era — including drummer Patrick Wilson and original guitarist Jason Cropper — join RS Senior Writer Brian Hiatt to tell the story of the unlikely birth of Weezer, and the making of a classic debut album that’s still winning over new generations of fans.
In 2003, Rolling Stone published its definitive countdown of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the most popular and most argued-over list in the magazine’s history. In 2020, we completely remade the list, adding more than 150 new titles. With the Amazon Original podcast Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums, we’re delving further into the making and meaning of many of the records that made the cut, with exclusive insights from the artists who created them — and those who know them and their music best. Weezer’s Blue Album placed at number 294 in the latest ranking.
Hosted by RS Senior Writer Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums appears exclusively on Amazon Music, with a new episode appearing each week. Check out the Blue Album episode above.
