Buddy Holly by Weezer

“Buddy Holly” music video

“Buddy Holly” live performance

When “Buddy Holly” was released in 1994 a combination of grunge music, corporate pop and gangster rap ruled MTV and the radio stations and for a 7th grade at Islander Middle School it was all a lot to take in.

I grew up on Mercer Island which is a suburb of Seattle. It’s a mostly upper-class city with a combination of gated communities and retirement homes. It’s also the home of the first drive through Starbucks (which was the central hangout spot). Instead of a junior high in my district, there was elementary schools for grades 1-5, a middle school for grades 6-8.

Like most middle school students, I struggled to find define my social identity. I wasn’t going to do the grunge thing. I didn’t really fit in the Gap crowd, which was more of preppy thing then it is now. I didn't really find a place to fit in. I did have couple people I talked to in class but in general. . .yeah, that was my awkward stage (which lasted for about another 10 years. . . j/k . . kind of).

I knew I didn’t like grunge music. Grunge music just seemed like a mess. It didn’t make sense to my ears and I couldn’t really relate to the pessimism and anger in the music. Since then, I’ve come to understand the subtleties and craft in artists like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and there’s nothing like high school to make teenage angst actually make sense.

When I first saw the video for “Buddy Holly” on MTV my first thought was to turn away to the safe haven of VH1 (which at that time was an adult contemporary channel as opposed to the Celebreality channel it has turned into). The opening of the song sounded like a grunge sound with distorted chords moving in parallel motion between the chords (going from chords that are right next to each other like C chord to the D chord as opposed to a C chord to a G chord). A pretty angry sounding melody, and then “woohoo." It was with this exclamation that Weezer hooked me.

What Weezer did in “Buddy Holly” is bring together different layers of popular culture uniquely reflecting both the past and present in American becoming the future of modern pop music. Weezer started with what was happening around them taking the sound of grunge music and combining them with lyrics borrowed from the gangster rap. This reflected not only the gangster rap vernacular but the weird phenomenon people living in the suburbs hopelessly attempting to utilize gangster rap slang in their everyday speech.

Weezer references every decade in this song since the 1950s. Buddy Holly is one of the fathers of rock & roll who gained prominence before his death in 1959s. The “woo-ee-oo” and the “woo-hoo” hearkens all the way back to the doo-wop era of the early 1960s. Mary Tyler Moore is one of the most important woman in television history who started in The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970-1977. Then there’s the distorted guitar lines used in the transitions, which are a throw-back to 1980s synthesized rock.

The inclusion of these many facets of culture makes “Buddy Holly” both an retrospective and interesting representation of American culture but its joyous and devotional message is what makes it meaningful.

The feel of the chorus is reminiscent of a 1960s pop song but instead of playing around with the an idealized vision of love, Rivers talks about love in a more realistic way. “Buddy Holly” describes a relationship that lead singer Rivers Cuomo had with an Asian girl, “your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit.” Rivers’ friends frequently made fun of her and this song is a statement of support. During the song Rivers states how they belong to each other and how he doesn’t care about what other people say which is bittersweet as he is being supportive in the face of difficult situation.

“Buddy Holly” explored the expressive possibilities of grunge music. There is a wide array of possibilities in all kinds of music and Weezer’s creation of a song which they initially thought sounded “cheesy” opened up my ears acting as a gateway to a whole new world of music.

What is most important to me about “Buddy Holly” is that through its video and widespread acceptance that I could like a certain kind of music and well, not have to dress a certain way. By appealing across genres, Weezer showed that music was not so much about the way people dressed or even the way they acted but the music itself. "Buddy Holly" showed me that it was okay for a this suburban bred Asian kid to rock out to whatever he wanted to and for a 12 year old that means the world.