Album · Weezer
Pinkerton by Weezer
Pinkerton is an album by Weezer, released in 1996. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 49 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “El Scorcho”, on 31 lists with a best position of #9.
Pinkerton, Weezer's second album, came out on DGC on September 24, 1996, and it's the sound of a band pulling the sweater off. Rivers Cuomo wrote most of it while studying at Harvard, after shelving a rock opera called Songs from the Black Hole, and the band produced it themselves, chasing the raw crunch of their shows. It's rougher and darker than the Blue Album: fuzzed-out guitars, Patrick Wilson bashing away, and Cuomo singing about loneliness and his disgust with the rock-star grind. The title nods to Puccini's Madama Butterfly, whose sailor Pinkerton Cuomo saw as a kind of touring musician, and like the opera the record looks at Japan strictly from the outside.
"El Scorcho" and "The Good Life" were the singles, but the album flopped and the reviews were mixed. Time was kinder: it grew into a cult favorite, went platinum in the US in 2016, and emo bands have named it as an influence. It was also Matt Sharp's last album on bass.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Pinkerton on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | El Scorcho | 31 | #9 | – | 1996–2023 | |
| 2 | The Good Life | 15 | #61 | – | 1997–2023 | |
| 3 | Pink Triangle | 1 | #548 | – | 2023 | |
| 4 | Tired of Sex | 2 | #659 | – | 2023–2024 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.