Weezer (Teal Album)

A cover album the band's putting out for shits and giggles, and honestly, as a fan of most of these songs, it's nostalgic gold for me.

As well as they’ve delivered The Teal Album, they don’t quite hit the mark with every one of its takes, with their version ‘No Scrubs’ feeling more than a little bit uncomfortable.

Taken on a strictly musical terms, The Teal Album is pretty anodyne stuff. Weezer replicates the arrangements of beloved songs, adds a bit more fuzz on the guitar solos, and flattens the vocal affectations, which amounts to one weird trick: Weezer doesn't attempt to make the songs their own, yet these versions unmistakably sound like Weezer.

If you don’t want to listen to it, don’t. Weezer couldn’t care less. But for anyone that likes a good clean pop cover by a band who is very good at cover songs, hey, here’s ten songs for you.

Respectful enough to rouse any struggling family gathering but knowing enough to amuse those in on the joke, The Teal Album at once satirises the covers album and makes a decent stab at perfecting it.

For an album with both a Eurythmics cover AND a Black Sabbath cover it’s a surprisingly listenable, albeit pointless entry in their discography, Weezer has spent a decade becoming more interesting to read about than listen to.

The lifelessness of the covers ensures that it has a shelf life that isn’t much longer than your average meme.

The whole endeavor feels like a joke set-up with no punchline. The Teal Album's greatest sin is it is neither the best nor worst version of itself and by being so overwhelming mediocre, it renders itself completely pointless. It is essentially musical copypasta.