"Grapes of Wrath" is the 3rd track on Weezer's (first) 2021 album, OK Human1. The album, a complete departure for the band, features exactly zero electric guitars. Gone are the crunchy riffs, Moog synths and wah-wah solos. In their place are an assortment of more contemplative (yet still damn catchy) pianos and strings. I know every Weezer fan says this about every successive Weezer album, but OK Human might be my favorite Weezer release since 1996's Pinkerton.
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| OK Human |
Despite the success of "All My Favorite Songs," "Grapes of Wrath" might be OK Human's best track2. "Grapes" is—somehow—both upbeat and contemplative. Even better, the song is about the transformative power of literature!
.jpg/640px-The_Grapes_of_Wrath_(1939_1st_ed_cover).jpg "The Grapes of Wrath")
The song's refrain name-drops Audible. As in Amazon's subscription-only book and audiobook service Audible. The same Audible that gobbles up books and authors and puts them behind a paywall so that Jeff Bezos can buy another yacht. Ech. As someone who believes free information, who's devoted the better part of 20 years to libraries, the idea of a band pimping Audible makes me barf in my mouth a little bit.
The Audible-referencing lyric feels suspiciously like product placement. The musical equivalent of Vin Diesel turning to camera and taking a long, satisfied sip from a perfectly dewy Coke Zero before shifting his muscle car into gear and peeling ass out of frame. That Amazon went on to promote Weezer's OK Human and "Grapes of Wrath" across its various platforms only makes the connection feel worse.
So. To quote a much better lyric, let's take a sad song and make it better. Much like scrubbing McDonald's golden arches and clown mascots from its otherwise outstanding NES title, M.C. Kids, lets get out our writers' turpentine and scrub Jeff Bezos from Weezer. While we're at it, let's strengthen the verses so they feel less like literary name-dropping and more like a cohesive narrative.