'Avin' a Weeze

Weezer - Buddy Holly

Video

I'm a little confused about this song. I mean, I like it, but is it really one of the greatest songs of all time? All I really remember is the chorus and the video. In fact, it's a bit like Sabotage by the Beastie Boys - a song where it was difficult to divorce the popularity of the song from the popularity of the video. Additionally, the video of Buddy Holly was distributed with Microsoft Windows 95, that bastion of anti-commercialism and rebellion. However, one clear difference between Sabotage and Buddy Holly is that Sabotage is actually pretty good.

Rolling Stone say that: "In the early 1990s, Cuomo had an awkward girlfriend who was routinely picked on. His efforts to stick up for her inspired Weezer's breakthrough, a track whose bubble-grunge hooks and lines such as 'I look just like Buddy Holly/And you're Mary Tyler Moore' helped the band reach a nation of pop-minded suburban punks. It also earned them personalized, autographed photos from the real Mary Tyler Moore."

Back to the song - it's the kind of fuzz-box slacker anthem that Blink 182 would have made if they preferred heroin to Red Bull and it's catchy as hell. Plus, it's the first song on the list released after I was born, which makes me fond of it already, and it's almost modern, despite being 15 years old. Despite liking the song at the time, I've never gotten into Weezer. Albums like Pinkerton pissed me off for being too shoe-gazing and snide. I always got the feeling the Cuomo was laughing at the world, all smirking, thinking "I can make the biggest load of shit, and hipsters will buy it because once I made a song that had a video of The Fonzie dancing in it".

A song that, apparently, Rivers Cuomo hated and didn't want to record. He was convinced by producer Rick Ocazek, a man known for producing pretty good bands like Bad Religion. Clearly he saw something in the song (and Weezer) and the success of the song meant that Weezer could buy themselves hundreds of gold-plated woolen jerseys with holey elbows.

Taxonomy: Pseudo-grunge, Great Video

Tomorrow: Miss You - The Rolling Stones