Weezer - Weezer (The Black Album) (March 1, 2019) Album • Page 58

I wonder Rivers even thinks about his own music and albums lol.

 

tagging @Jason Tate because I think this would be a cool news post

 

LOL this is some great album promo

 

Only Weezer.

 

Yeah honestly that is kind of a huge deal. The day the new season went live as well. Pretty fucking smart.

 

Make Believe and Hurley’s biggest problem is that they are boring. Raditude is bad. Red felt half baked in parts but the best songs and the B Sides redeem it because it’s weird and interesting at least. Everything since EWBAITE has been interesting, and that’s all I want at this point. They are good for 3-5 songs from each record that I’ll like/love.

Edit: Also, all of the Weezer takedown articles continue to be embarrassing. It’s been 20+ years since Pinkerton. Move the fuck on. Yeesh.

 

After listening to Red yesterday, I like most of it, it just has a stretch of 4 or so songs in the middle that are mediocre to bad and kill its momentum

Oh and I guess that includes the bonus tracks, those were mostly good. Without those it's pretty weak

 

I mean, King is one of the best songs in their entire catalog.

 

The thing everyone seems to ignore: Pinkerton is filled with the sorts of lyrics people are apologizing for in 2019. It’s understandable that college aged, depressed, angry Rivers wrote it in 1996, but it needs to stay there. And frankly, if someone my age (34) was to talk about how much Pinkerton meant to them right now, I would be legitimately concerned for who they are as a human. That record was hugely important to me when I was a teenager; if I haven’t grown past that, it isn’t a reflection of Weezer sucking - it’s a reflection that I do.

All these outlets lionizing Pinkerton would rightly freak out if Rivers had kept writing songs like that and was still that guy. Which just makes the takes all the lazier.

 

Idk, I agree with every criticism of Pinkerton and I obviously don’t want him making that album again. But I do want Rivers to write songs that feel like they mean something to him and this ain’t it.

 

The chorus to Living In LA gets stuck in my head constantly

 

I think this is fair, and it’s how I felt for a long time too. But I don’t even know how many interviews and stories I’ve read with him where he makes it clear this IS it. He loves the songs he’s writing, and he’s writing them exactly the way he wants to. He’s happy and fulfilled and excited about it these songs and records, even when the fans hate them.

 

High as a Kite feels hella meaningful to me. Byzantine and Piece of Cake too. just because he's producing songs more doesn't mean he's lost all emotion, I never understood that association

 

He uses an automated system and a spreadsheet to write lyrics. I’m not one to argue the “realness” of music, but cmon

 

how is that different from artists who rework old demos into new songs? he's automated the process of what goes where but he's putting together bits of stuff he's written and most of those bits meant something to him at some point

 

He uses a random generator to pick out lyrics off of a spreadsheet

 

cool you're clearly not open to anything I'm saying here so peace

 

Right. And in the year 2000, when talking about the Green Album, he talked about trying to write the ‘perfect pop song’ by studying The Beach Boys and Nirvana. He talked about keeping their songs and lyrics in binders, and then having binders of his own songs to compare.

He then spent at least one major tour and over a year with demoes of songs for an album that would never come out, asking fans on the message boards of Weezer.com for feedback - which he took into consideration. Random songs of random lyrics, all searching for the right formula.

Nothing about random lines of lyrics he writes going into spreadsheets is remotely out of character for Rivers Cuomo. This is who he’s been for at least the last 19 years. At what point do we just say ‘this must be how Rivers Cuomo is wired’ instead of ‘welp, he must not care because I heard what he wrote in he mid-90s’?

 

Even before Weezer he was in hair metal bands and shit, then jumped on the alt-rock bandwagon when Nirvana broke. He's ALWAYS been chasing what he thinks will win him the next big pop hit. That's been Weezer's eternal struggle and it's kind of beautiful. And doesn't make the songs any less sincere imo

 

Perhaps that’s why I haven’t felt an emotional connection to his lyrics since Pinkerton, then. He can write well crafted songs. I enjoy the weirder ones. The peak of post-Pinkerton pop Weezer is easily Green. Maladroit allowed them to get into the weird metal niche that they were all a fan of. After that, the spark kinda died out. Hurley and White are high points in the late Weezer canon, but I can’t say I’ve felt anything emotional beyond simply enoying the melodies. Jacked Up is probably my favorite Post-Mal song, and the lyrics are meaningless. Not to say they were writing anything brilliant on Dope Show, either. I just found their songwriting more interesting there.

 

I think a lot of the songs on EWBAITE are personal and I’d be surprised if something like Foolish Father was just random lyrics from a spreadsheet.

 

Some songs are clearly spreadsheet songs and some seem to be written mostly in a normal way. I think generally if a song seems to be about a specific concept (Beach Boys, Any Friend of Diane’s, Do You Wanna Get High?), you can assume it’s not a spreadsheet song. If it’s just a random smattering of nonspecific lines about California or love or whatever, I assume it’s a spreadsheet song.

 

Lol

 

so every Red Hot Chili Peppers song is written by Rivers Cuomo on a spreadsheet?