Today is the 26th anniversary of Weezer’s self-titled debut album, which is often referred to as The Blue Album. The album features one of the band’s signature songs, “Buddy Holly,” which had an iconic music video that blended clips of the band performing with footage from the ‘70s sitcom, Happy Days. The song was a radio hit and went Gold, but one of the ways it exploded in popularity was that the video was included in the Windows 95 CD-ROM—but the band had no idea it was happening.
“Geffen never told us [they had negotiated a deal with Microsoft that would have the ‘Buddy Holly’ video included with Windows 95],“ said Weezer’s Karl Koch to Magnet magazine, in an oral history of the band. “Nobody in the band even had a computer at that [time] so we had no idea how big a deal that was.”
To understand how popular it was, consider that personal computers went mainstream in the mid-1990s. As millions of Americans bought a computer for the first time, nearly every PC came with Windows 95. Forbes referred to Windows 95 as “The Most Important Operating System Of All Time.”
“I was furious because at the time I was like, ‘How are they allowed to do this without our permission?’" said Pat Wilson, Weezer’s drummer, to Magnet. “Turns out it was one of the greatest things that could have happened to us. Can you imagine that happening today? It’s like, there’s one video on YouTube, and it’s your video.”
The song—named after the 1950s singer-songwriter and rock and roll legend Buddy Holly—was written after friends of Weezer’s lead singer Rivers Cuomo made fun of his Asian girlfriend. Cuomo notes the disrespect in the opening lyrics:
What’s with these homies dissin' my girl?
Why do they gotta front?
What did we ever do to these guys
That made them so violent?
Cuomo also nods to his girlfriend’s ethnicity in the second verse with lines about her eyes:
Don’t you ever fear, I’m always near
I know that you need help
Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit
After writing the song, Cuomo didn’t want to include it on the album as he felt it was too cheesy, but producer Ric Ocasek convinced him to add it to the album.
Spike Jonze directed the music video. The Happy Days concept was Jonze’s idea, and thanks to his camera work and editing, the music video didn’t feature any computer graphics.
“Buddy Holly” would peak at no. 17 on Billboard’s US Mainstream Top 40 and eventually go Gold. It would help Weezer’s debut become their best selling album, with over 3 million copies sold in the US.
Read all the lyrics to Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” on Genius now.
