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Van Weezer is essentially a blend of two of their previous albums, "Hurley" and "Everything Will Be All Right In The End". Sure, the Van Halen and 70s/80s arena rock influences are there, but this is a Weezer album through and through. I admire that there is an emphasis on wicked guitar solos here, because they elevate these songs to fun places. I don't think Van Weezer was meant to be taken seriously at all.

"All The Good Ones" is definitely my favorite here, with its speaker-pounding bassline, and thumping beat. It's pretty much a 2021 update of "Beverly Hills", and I can see it becoming a fan favorite. I also want to mention that the metal breakdown in "1 More Hit" is sick af! Plus, they fact that they lifted the Crazy Train riff for "Blue Dream" is awesome and hilarious!

The only song on here I'm not too crazy about is the closer, "Precious Metal Girl". Which is sad, since Weezer usually have really cool closers. PMG is pretty much just a retread of the White Album closer, "Endless Bummer", just without the full band explosion at the end. Not to mention, the main vocal melody of that song sounds like the vocal melody of "Across the Sea". Closing out Van Weezer with an anticlimactic acoustic ditty was a bad move imo. Van Weezer needed an explosive closer that could blow the roof off an arena.

Also, why was "I've Thrown It All Away" NOT on this album????? Yeah, it's a vinyl bonus, but not everyone buys vinyl records. That song would've been the best on Van Weezer.

UPDATE: corrected the typos where I wrote the album as Van Halen rather than Van Weezer.

After a strange year for Weezer in 2019, and a strange year for all of us in 2020, Weezer blessed January 2021 with OK Human, their most intimate and baroque influenced album yet. This album is beautiful, and so human in its approach, which is a welcome change after Weezer spent the latter part of the 2010's making their sound much more pop oriented and overproduced. Speaking on production, White Album producer Jake Sinclair did a superb job on OK Human. The seamless transitions between the songs makes for an engaging listen, and I always end up listening to the entire album rather than just a couple of tracks. Despite the album title being a play on Radiohead's "OK Computer", I would actually liken it to Radiohead's "A Moon Shaped Pool". AMSP and OK Human both reveal more vulnerable and human sides of their respective bands, and the results are stellar. On OK Human, Weezer eschew guitars for an orchestra backing, which create lush soundscapes when paired with Rivers' piano and warm singing. The organic feel of this album makes it stand out as their most unique album. My favorite song on here is "Grapes of Wrath", which inspired me to finally read the classic novel "1984". It also makes me want to listen to audiobooks on Audible. "La Brea Tar Pits" wonderfully continues the Weezer tradition of having epic closing songs for their albums. OK Human is perfect for those cozy days when you just want to be wrapped in a blanket all day.

It's been interesting to follow Weezer's career for the past 4 years, seeing as they essentially threw rock music out the window, and experimented with new styles. Considering that Van Weezer is next in the pipeline, and is established as an album that'll bring the RAWK back, who knows if Weezer will ever make an album as beautiful and humanly vulnerable as OK Human again. If and when Weezer ever come to an end, I can see OK Human being hailed as one of their absolute best.

Three Dollar Bill Y'all is the definitive nu-metal album imo. It's got it all. Psychedelic guitars, banging drums, funky and jazzy bass, and of course, Fred Durst's chaotic rapping/singing. The jazz bridge on "Stuck", and the rap breakdown on "Clunk" are sick AF! Speaking of sick, the song "Sick" is funky, and very Korn influenced. This album has many Korn and Tool influenced sounds, yet is still original in Limp Bizkit's unapologetic approach. "Everything" the last song on here, is a 16 minute jam which is slow and soft until the final minute. Unusual ending for an unusual album. The lead single, "Counterfeit", perfectly sums up what Limp Bizkit are all about.

Oh, man. This album is super special to me. In my eyes, it is the true sequel to Weezer's magnum opus, Pinkerton. Even its title, Rock and Roll Part Three, symbolically suggests it makes up a trilogy with Weezer's Blue Album and Pinkerton.

The opening track, "Domino Effect", is the best Weezer song that wasn't made by Weezer. And, "Domino Effect" perfectly sets the tone for Rock and Roll Part Three. This album is rife with 80s and 90s nostalgia, reminiscing of lost teen crushes, and simple, yet relatable and memorable lyrics.

This album's centerpiece song "Battlescars", is a triumph. It is an atypical standout of this album, with an 8 minute runtime, where Ozma starts the song with quiet keyboard sounds, then blasts your ear-drums with the full band exploding like a bomb in your face. On this song, they bare all their feelings out, and it is a cathartic experience. Honestly, this song is my favorite song ever.

"Baseball" is another favorite here, with its fun bassline, and therapeutic buildup. I always sing along to the bridge of that song in my car. "Natalie Portman" has lyrics that make me laugh, because when you're young, celebrity crushes seem so real and important. Nostalgia and adolescent lovelorn are major themes in this album.

Despite the constant comparisons to Weezer, this album shows that Ozma had a lot of spark and originality in them as well. Songs like "Rocks" and "In Search of 1988", with their youthful lyrics and Super Mario references, make me feel young at heart.

Rock and Roll Part Three saw a release in the same year as Weezer's comeback album, The Green Album, yet this was a case where the students outperformed their sensei.

Paul's Boutique is my favorite album of all time. Regardless of genre, decade, etc. With this album, the Beasties created the "Pet Sounds" of hip-hop, and it is an album that has never been outdone, not even by Beastie Boys themselves. The sampling on this album is intricate and outrageously clever. On "Egg Man" there's samples of the Psycho and Jaws themes played simultaneously. Who thinks of that? The sampling on this album is legendary, and can probably never be done again due to copyright laws. The Beastie's rapping is on fire here, and they never miss a beat. If you haven't already, just listen to Paul's Boutique. It is a life affirming masterpiece.

Private Eyes is possibly the definitive Hall & Oates album. It contains two of their biggest hits, "Private Eyes" and "I Can't Go For That", along with the minor hit, "Your Imagination". This album is groovy, danceable, iconic, and even the more mellow moments make you want to get up and boogie! It almost plays out like a greatest hits album in its own right. Of course, Daryl Hall's singing here elevates the songs to great heights, and the two songs where John Oates sings lead are fantastic as well. The rhythm section were on fire on this album, and the saxophone playing will make you wish you played sax. This album is the perfect soundtrack for a nightclub after dark.

Highly entertaining and experimental album from the Beasties that capped off their 90's era in a glorious way! This album is more like a mixtape than a focused album, so it sprawls all over to many different styles, experiments, and genres. On "Hello Nasty", there's NYC boom bap, reggae, instrumental jams, and samples from many non-American, non-English singing artists. This all makes for a massive 67 minute outing from Beastie Boys, where they proudly display all of their inspirations and musical prowess.

The rapping and lyrics here are some of the Beastie's most progressive, and their style of back-and-forth trio rapping makes songs like "Intergalactic" ,"Body Moving", and "Three MC's and One DJ" sound EXPLOSIVE. This album has several callbacks to their first two albums, which makes it feel like a full circle moment in their career.

Some of the songs on here are a bit too out there, imo, such as "Dr Lee, PHD", which is a five minute reggae jam. I don't listen to much reggae, so I probably can't appreciate that song as much as a reggae fan would. The closing song here is also anticlimactic for such an explosive album. However, the few slightly underwhelming moments on here don't detract from the overall product too much. I am so glad Beastie Boys exist. Their music always makes me feel great and lively.

"The Dreaming" is a true tour de force. While its successor, "Hounds of Love" may be more of an easy listen (the first half of it, anyway), this album right here is where Kate Bush truly came into her own. On this album, Bush uses her voice as a complex instrument of its own. She screams, hollers, yells, whispers, sings in low registers, sings in higher registers, and even makes animal sounds throughout this album. This album is unique and unlike anything else I've heard. Every emotion, from angry rage to ecstatic joy, is expressed through her voice in this album's runtime. Instrumentally, everything here is on fire! Pianos, strings, drums, and other instruments form beautiful and artsy songs that are so expressive and enthralling. The fact that Kate Bush, wrote and produced this album all on her own, is a testament to how truly brilliant and magnificent she is, especially considering she made this in her early 20's. "The Dreaming" and "Hounds of Love" are both 10/10 masterpieces to me, but I'd say "The Dreaming" gets the edge. This album is an enigma that has to be heard to be believed.

This album seems like Weezer wanted to retcon Pinkerton. The album reuses the self-titled and color-coded scheme of their debut, yet the music is extremely simple and puts the pop in pop rock. In fact, Weezer (Green Album) is essentially an early 2000's pop album with guitars.

Now, Pinkerton and the Blue Album weren't ultra complex albums either, but Green completely does away with the emotional bloodletting of Pinkerton, and the adolescent yearnings of Blue. Green is super condensed and slick, to the point that most of the songs blend into each other, and make this album play out as if it was a single 28 and a 1/2 minute song.

The strangest thing about this album is that all of the guitar solos are just the guitar repeating the main vocal melody of its song. I guess Rivers wanted to consciously dumb down the music for the masses. Green wasn't made for the sexless geeks who listened to Pinkerton after jackin' off to that girl who never liked them back. Green was made for the radio. And, it worked for Weezer. To this day, "Hash Pipe" and "Island In The Sun" are some of their most popular songs.

This album has no equivalents to "Say It Ain't So", or "Undone", or "Across the Sea", or "El Scorcho". Though I do think "Hash Pipe" is essentially a sequel to "Buddy Holly".

The closer, "O, Girlfriend" and the first four songs on this album are some of my favorite Weezer songs ever! Tracks five to nine all just kinda blend into each other, but I still like them in a guilty pleasure kind of way. Green is an easy, breezy album to play in the background on a nice Spring or Summer day.

Maladroit is the album in Weezer's discography that pretty much every Weezer fan says is their most underrated album. And, I'd wager to say that assertion is true. This album was released a year after the Green Album, which was an awkward time for Weezer, truth be told. Rivers Cuomo was a raging edgelord, he developed a hatred of Pinkerton (and the Blue Album), and he was adamant on wishing his fans would prefer the new Weezer over 90s Weezer.

This album was a very collaborative process between Rivers and the fanbase, where they communicated via early internet chatrooms. As such, the final product is more like an alt-rock mixtape than a cohesive album. However, this album is surprisingly progressive for Weezer. Songs like "Death & Destruction", "Burndt Jamb", and "American Gigolo" push Weezer into Radiohead territory. "Slob" could've been a lost Pinkerton song. "Slave" is a perfect mix of old and new Weezer.

"December" is a mellow closer, and might not be as emotionally heavy as Weezer's other closers, but it is a very sweet song, and I'd rather listen to it than anything on alt radio today.

I love and appreciate Maladroit for the chaotic playlist it is, and I much prefer it over most of Weezer's later albums. Each new listen, I find something new to love about Maladroit. This album took a while to grow on me, but now I think it is in Weezer's top five.