Alternate Tracklisting: A Single Album by Weezer ca. 2008-2010

Problem: Weezer was pretty prolific for the 3-year period 2008-2010, but the the three records they released during that time are pretty uneven.. Some great singles, some creative work, and a lot of songs I don't like.

Solution: Create a single pared-down, ten-song album from Weezer (the Red Album), Raditude, and Hurley.

Options: There are actually a lot of ways to do this: you can make a whole concept album about a rock star; you can do a record that's only about teenage romance; you can do a more grown-up 'relationship' album, you could make it into some kind of midlife crisis record, whatever. In addition, I actually like a lot of the songs that most Weezer fans seem to hate; I think "In the Mall" is one of the better songs on Raditude, and even a song like "Everybody Get Dangerous," while I don't like it, has a handful of good melodies and lyrical ideas.

My final answer: to make a tracklist with no gimmicks whatsoever; the "purest" "Weezer record" one could make from these three albums. This turned out to be easy: I only picked songs that are solely written by and sung by Rivers Cuomo. That rules out almost all of Raditude and Hurley (co-writers), and about half the red album (sung by other members of the band). It does mean leaving out some genuinely good songs: "If You're Wondering If I Want You To," which is a great pop single, gets cut because it has a co-writer, for example. "Miss Sweeney" has an amazing chorus but is pretty gimmicky and technically has a lyric co-writer. I also really like "Dreamin'" but it has a section with lead vocals by Brian Bell. It was an executive decision to leave off "Pig," which a lot of people thought was Cuomo's most "emotional" song in years, because it didn't make thematic sense and I thought it was kind of...gimmicky, also.

Anyway, I sequenced this so the first half of the record is about being in a band, and the second half is about a relationship that encounters some trouble. What emerges is a record about a musician who's unhappy with his career getting lost in nostalgia, meeting a girl and falling in love, then watching that relationship fall apart while he returns to music for solace. "The Angel and the One" is kind of an ambiguous ending, but it's a great song and it does end the record on a pretty solid note of redemption.

The tracklist:

Troublemaker

Pork and Beans

Memories

Run Over By a Truck

Heart Songs

Trippin' Down the Freeway

The Prettiest Girl in the Whole Wide World

Unspoken

I Don’t Want to Let You Go

The Angel and the One

Listen in Spotify: