SONG OF THE DAY
“No One Else” by Weezer (Weezer [The Blue Album], DGC, 1994).
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– Weezer, also known as The Blue Album, is the debut album by the American alternative rock band Weezer.
– The album was produced by former Cars frontman Ric Ocasek and recorded in Electric Lady Studios in New York City.
– The Blue Album spawned the popular singles “Undone – The Sweater Song”, “Buddy Holly”, and “Say It Ain’t So”, all of which were responsible for launching Weezer into mainstream success with the aid of music videos directed by Spike Jonze.
– As of December 2007, the album had sold 3,146,000 copies in the United States, where it peaked at #16 on the Billboard 200. It is certified triple-platinum in the US and double-platinum in Canada.
– While prepping for the forthcoming studio sessions, the band focused on their vocal interplay by practicing barbershop quartet-styled songs, which helped both Cuomo and Sharp achieve a newfound collaborative comfort during rehearsals. Sharp, who never sang before joining Weezer, got his falsetto background vocal abilities—”I had to sing an octave higher than Rivers. After a lot of practice, I started to get it down.”
– Most of the album was written by Rivers Cuomo. Exceptions are “My Name Is Jonas”, which was co-written with Jason Cropper and Patrick Wilson, and “Surf Wax America”, which was composed and written by Cuomo and Wilson.
– Both “No One Else” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” are lyrically connected, with Cuomo describing the narrator of “No One Else” as “the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend” and claiming that “‘The World has Turned and Left Me Here’ is the same asshole wondering why she’s gone.”
– In the years since its release, The Blue Album has risen in stature to become one of the most highly-regarded albums of the 1990s, appearing on many “Best-of” lists. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the album #297 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2002, the readers of Rolling Stone ranked the album the 21st greatest of all time. Blender named the Blue Album among the “500 CDs You Must Own”, calling the album “Absolute geek-rock, out and proud.”