10/02/2025
Once again, I (Joe) really can't take much credit for this next release, which is undoubtedly the biggest thing we ever put out. It was Ross/arcadecoma who curated the whole tribute.
When he sent it to me I was blown away, but I still didn't know it would get the attention it did. Yes, this is Weezer - The 8-bit Album.
Ross had been mentioning it to a few people here and there, and it ended up getting linked on the official Weezer website around the time of release. At that time we were putting things out on a very basic website I'd built and hosting the MP3s on the Internet Archive.
News of release then got picked up by blogs like Kotaku, Wired and Synthtopia, and we had to ask friends if we could use their webspace because the Internet Archive downloads were running too slowly. Then it ended up burning through all the webspace we'd borrowed. I remember being told we'd hit 10k downloads within a few days on just one of those webhosts. Who knows the total number of downloads?
I think there are a few reasons it got huge. 8-bit tribute releases always do well, but here the music is just great. Sometimes when you put out a comp, people can phone it in, but that didn't happen here. Pretty much every track is a banger. Some of the covers added a fun slant (Videogame Orchestra, Nordloef), while some seemed to tap into the true spirit of the original and run with it in chip form (PDF Format, Tugboat). Anamanaguchi and Bit Shifter busting out the vocals was a lovely surprise too (something I wish they'd both done more of). Yeah, the lineup was just stellar in general.
Secondly, the cover art from David Mauro did exactly what it needed to. It's bright, it's iconic and it's a knowing twist on the Blue Album cover for Weezer fans.
Thirdly, I think it hit at the right time. Weezer was relatively popular in 2009, and chiptune was kinda blowing up, and it just seemed to tap into the musical trends of the time. Nerdy indie and electronica was big, as were netlabels and downloading MP3s.
A cool thing happened a few years later when I was just walking round my hometown and I heard one of the shops was playing it over the speakers. I'm glad people are still listening to it and it had the reach it did. People have said to me it was the first chiptune they ever heard. I also remember it getting mentioned in an interview with Rivers Cuomo and he said he was fine with it, so it was dope to get that final seal of approval from the man himself.
It also almost led to an opportunity to work with the band. But maybe I'll say more about that when we get to the Weezer - The Second 8-bit Album in this series...