He was cute; he was vulnerable; he had glasses. Really cool glasses. His hair was unfortunate; his features were delicate; in his videos, he could never quite hold eye contact with the camera. He wore sweaters a lot, and he sang about wearing the sweaters; he was a sweater-wearing dude, that Rivers Cuomo. He sang at you on the radio. He loved you, more desperately than anyone ever had, or would.

If you happened to be of a certain age when “The Blue Album” came out-let’s say, for the purposes of total non-specificity and universal relatability, “exactly twelve years old”-the highly sweater-centric single from that album, and the revelation that its singer was in fact good-looking, opened up a whole new landscape of sexual possibility.

–Sady Doyle, in The Awl (2010), on Weezer. Read more on music from the Longreads Archive.

Celebrate Weezer’s 20th anniversary by reflecting on all the ways their music fucked you up http://t.co/rvzm0RiIBR #longreads

— Hellford (@yumhyeran) May 10, 2014