Retro Video of the Week: "Undone - The Sweater Song" by Weezer

This past Saturday marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Weezer's self-titled debut album, known colloquially as "The Blue Album."  While that sentence makes me feel very old, I can think of only a handful of debut albums released in my lifetime that I enjoy more than Weezer's.  The songs are catchy, thoughtful, and rocking.  It was kind of the perfect antidote to grunge, proving that, even in the '90s, you could rock without brooding and wearing flannel.  This is one of those albums that I never get tired of listening to.

Despite the album's success in stores (it went platinum in the U.S. in less than a year), it only reached #17 on the Billboard album charts and spawned exactly zero Top 40 songs on the Billboard Hot 100.  However, that's not an accurate indication of how awesome this album is.  From top to bottom, there's not a bad song on The Blue Album.  It was critically acclaimed when it was released, and has been acclaimed even more so since then, finding its way onto tons of "best of" lists, from Best Albums of the '90s to Best Debut Albums of All-Time to Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All-Time. If you don't own this album, you should probably buy it right now.

Rather than go with the more popular Happy Days-themed video for "Buddy Holly," I decided to go with "Undone - The Sweater Song" because it was the band's first single and their first video, and it was what introduced most of the world (including me) to Weezer.  The single was the only song off of the album that charted on Billboard's Hot 100, peaking at #57 (although this song, "Buddy Holly," and "Say It Ain't So" all made the Top 40 on the UK charts, the Top 10 in Canada, and the Top 10 on Billboard's Modern Rock charts), and the video was directed by Spike Jonze (one of his earlier music video directing efforts, although he blew up pretty quickly around this time).

Here's to feeling old, but loving good music.