“Island in the Sun” by Weezer

"Island in the Sun" very nearly got left off Weezer's third album, the self-titled record from 2001; it was producer Ric Ocasek who fought to keep it. Good call. Rivers Cuomo wrote it, words and music, and it's the breeziest thing in the band's bag, a lazy, sun-warmed sway of power pop with a hook that practically hums itself.

It went out as the album's second single in July 2001 (in Australia it went first, since "Hash Pipe" never came out there), and it travelled: number 11 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, number 17 in France, the top 40 in Canada and the UK, and number seven in Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2001. In 2009 Pitchfork slotted it at 495 in its rundown of the decade's best songs.

The band kept tinkering with it onstage, reworking the solo late in 2001, and by 2005 Cuomo was often opening the encore by playing it alone on an acoustic guitar from the back of the venue.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.