Ranking every song on Weezer's 'Blue Album' now that it's 30 years old

Type “blue album” into Google and, despite the search engine’s depreciating quality, there’s one result that rises above the fray. Above Joni Mitchell and the Beatles stands Weezer’s major record debut, a self-titled masterpiece that launched the band into alternative pop stardom.

In 10 songs and fewer than 42 minutes, the California band stepped into a landscape defined by the bleakness of post-metal alternative rock and made things brighter — at least on the surface. Weezer existed at the precarious balance of surf rock, college radio and pop punk. They wore their nerd-dom on the outside and let their depression simmer under upbeat melodies until it was time to let it breathe through emphatic shouts or low rumbling vocals.

The band has gone through permutations since then, embracing its dork chic aesthetic and evolving as critcs and audiences embraced or rejected the earnestness of some records (Pinkerton) and detached pop appeal of others (whatever piece of garbage “The Girl Got Hot” came from). It’s easy to see Weezer as a sketch comedy punchline or meme cover band now, because that speaks to the band’s ubiquitousness. And that began in 1994 with the carefully plucked guitar opening of My Name Is Jonas.

There are no bad songs on the Blue Album. Ranking them is a purely subjective exercise. But here, as that album hits its 30th birthday, feels like as good a place as any to look back and drop them into order.