Weezer - Weezer (Blue Album)

Four men in cardigans standing against a blue backdrop, looking like they had been dragged out of a garage and told to hold still. Weezer's debut arrived in May 1994 with no obvious plan and became one of the defining rock records of its decade almost by accident.

Ric Ocasek produced it at Electric Lady in New York over about five weeks, and his fingerprints are everywhere in the clean guitar stacks and the way the harmonies sit forward in the mix. "Buddy Holly" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)" got the videos and the airplay, but the album's heart is the second side: "Say It Ain't So" builds from a clean arpeggio to the loudest chorus Rivers Cuomo ever wrote, "In The Garage" is a genuinely tender song about hiding from the world with a Kiss poster, and "Only In Dreams" spends eight minutes on a bassline before finally releasing.

It taught a generation that you could write about being uncool without irony and still make it sound enormous. Every power pop record since has been measured against it.