By Spence Blazak
The other day, I saw Weezer/Flaming Lips in concert, which led to one of the most interesting double edged sword moments I've experienced in awhile, but I'll get to that in a little while. This is the second time I've seen Weezer, and as with the first, it is a conflicting experience for me. The Blue Album and Pinkerton are two of my favorite albums of all time, but then..........the sell out. One of my favorite phrases. I've long thought about doing an article on this, but I could never decide on one of the many angles to do it from. Green Day? Sugar Ray? Every 90s band? Then this concert reminded me of the grand daddy of them all: Weezer.
I'll start from the beginning. Weezer was founded by a barrel chested young go-getter named Rivers Cuomo. He looks like a sickly version of me. He has horn rimmed glasses, a signature guitar strap with a lightning bolt running its course, and a grasp on love, practical intelligence, and nerd culture that makes him not only one of my favorite song writers, but he joins a very select list of mine called "People Who Went to Harvard That I Don't Despise." It sounds corny, because it is, but I always felt like this guy was an alternate reality Spence who became a rock star. I wouldn't want to be Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, or even Jeff Tweedy (the frontman of my favorite non-Taylor Swift musical group, Wilco), I would want to be Rivers Cuomo.
The band's first album was the masterpiece The Blue Album. Every. Track. Is. A. Hit. Not one bad song. Hell, not one song short of awesome. It opens with "My Name Is Jonas", a great lead off that is about how much "the man" sucks. We then go to a love song with a twist ("No One Else") and the ensuing break up ("The World Has Turned And Left Me Here"). The first is from the perspective of a man who is obsessed with his main squeeze. He is bat shit insane, and yet filled with a hauntingly powerful love. He sings "I want a girl who will laugh for no one else/While I'm away she puts he make up on the shelf." In the latter song, Cuomo constructs one of the few breakup songs that won't make you throw up and does wonders for any break up wound.
In "Spence's Flow Chart of Song Subjects" you will find the following information: 45% of songs are about love, 30% are about breakups, 14% are either political, about an event, or a feeling, 10% are about a sexual trick of one kind or another (like this), and that final 1% is Radiohead type stuff. When a song stands out in one of the overused molds, it is always worth noting.
"Only in Dreams" is a much better version of "She's Not There" by The Zombies, which is about being a hopeless romantic. "Holiday" is a fresh take on an old go to for love songs, the idea of running away with nothing but your lover. "Say It Ain't So" is about suspecting a cheating partner. If you'll notice the pattern here, all of these ideas are very familiar, yet Cuomo breathes life into these cliched subjects, making them his own and making them anthems.
I spent my time listening just to this album for the first few months I had discovered it before I branched out. Weezer's second album Pinkerton is a concept album that follows the plot of the opera Madame Butterfly and was initially panned by critics. It was received so poorly that the band took a long hiatus before returning to music. The problem is that Pinkerton is a masterpiece, and it didn't get its due until years after its release.
Its darker and a far cry from the punky style of its predecessor. It follows the brilliant style of the first album in turning hackneyed song subjects on their side and making something fresh. "Why Bother" asks why one should get into a relationship when they always end in hurt in the first place. You get the idea. Trust me, every song is awesome, but one stands above the rest: the triumphant "Across the Sea". One of my all time favorite songs. While Cuomo was at Harvard, he got a letter from a girl in Japan who had heard him on the radio. He says that he fell in love with her immediately and that he wanted to know everything about her. Then he realized that he never would, and that there was a good chance she was a 14-year old. It broke his heart, and he wrote an opus about it. "Why are you so far away from me?/ I need help, and your way across the sea."
Then came the hiatus. They released an inconsequential experimental album after a few years, but it was white noise. Then they released The Green Album which was a mediocre showing from the once great band. They weren't being themselves, they were turning into what they thought critics wanted. So they played it safe, and made a blah album. "Hash Pipe" is pretty good, "Island in the Sun" isn't bad, but thats about all the album is good for.
I need to take a minute before discussing the painful, next chapter......"Beverly Hills". They put out an album called Make Believe. A surprisingly decent showing, much better than The Green Album and a step in the very right direction. "My Best Friend", "Freak Me Out", and 'Perfect Situation" are all very promising cuts, but all the work is undone by, you guessed it, "Beverly Hills". It became a number one hit and haunted the charts for over a summer. Kids Bop covered it. A staple for 11 year olds. Sickeningly awful. They did a song that they weren't proud of for money, and it cemented them into a new image up until present day.
They followed up with a slew of hellish albums, The Red Album which had the awful semi hit "Pork and Beans", and Raditude the worst of them all which has two songs that will from no one be Weezer's legacy: "I Can't Stop Partying" and "If You're Wondering If I Want You To (I Want You To)". The latest album Hurley is so lame it couldn't even get a semi-hit. Trash. Complete trash. Their initial sell out was so horrid that they can't even do it right nowadays. I can't even see their incentive any more. Its like they are that really smart kid in high school who dumbs himself down to hang out with the cool kids...but they never really accept him as one of their own.
Selling out. A crime against humanity. This brings us back to the present. Weezer plays all the songs I want to hear, except "Across the Sea". Naturally. Then Cuomo goes into "If You're Wondering If I Want You To". The bastard. He runs into the crowd. No one is really flocking toward him, so me and my friend Dave run over to see how close we can get. We are 10 feet away from him. I yell "THE BLUE ALBUM ROCKED! COME OVER HERE!" He walked toward us and gave us both high fives. We patted him on the back as he walked away. I touched the hand that wrote some of music's greatest awesomeness of the last 20 years, and also the one that drove an ice pick into my back with Raditude. Farewell Weezer, maybe you will come back some day. Some day.
Well Spence, first of all there seems to be a glaring omission from Weezer's discography: Maladroit. Definitely not my favorite album, but also definitely not terrible... It has its moments.
ReplyDeleteAlso- I was at that show too, but farther back. The show itself wasn't bad, and I liked the whole three songs Flaming Lips/three songs Weezer thing. Speaking of The Flaming Lips though, it might be interesting to consider that while Weezer's music has certainly changed, I've heard "Do You Realize" in no less than four commercials, while (with the exception, apparently, of Kidz Bop) I haven't heard of a Weezer song being in a commercial.
As far as Weezer selling out goes, consider that critics still agree that Weezer's best album was The Blue Album... at least, critics that don't say that their best album was Pinkerton (many of them do). If Weezer has indeed sold out, it has certainly not been for critical acclaim, but for air time.
Pinkerton was initially panned by not just critics, but fans too. Consider that everyone loved the Blue Album and along with it, Weezer. They write an album everyone loves and follow it up with something that sounds nothing like it, genius though it may be. Then the opposite happened, and die-hard Pinkerton fans that came out of the woodwork slowly but in great numbers expected another Pinkerton and got the Green Album. This didn't happen again, because the Green Album has no staying power since, because of its radio-friendliness, it will never be a cult classic. This has been the case with their albums since.
Perfect Situation, Keep Fishin', and many other post-Pinkerton songs are really very good songs, even though they don't sound like the first two albums.
Weezer's sound has changed, and very few people that really care about music say that this evolution has been for the better. But would you consider all of Weezer's albums after Pinkerton an example of selling out if the Blue Album and Pinkerton had never existed?
In the Pokemon tv show, Pikachu didn't want to evolve into Raichu, even though he would have become more powerful; he would have become a very different Pokemon.
Weezer took the thunder stone to their music and evolved into a band with a much larger but less involved fan base- their music is still good, but they are no longer Pikachu, and because of this, even if they wrote another Blue Album, it would still seem like selling out.
It is too early to judge Weezer's recent albums by the same criteria as we judge The Blue Album or Pinkerton. My opinion? They will never release an album as good as the first one again. But hey, you always remember your first. Doesn't mean we can't enjoy everything that comes after.
-CK
I think it all depends on the definition of selling out. For me, its always been doing something that you don't believe in for a tangible gain (which doesn't have to be money). Flaming Lips lives in their own world, doing their own thing, and now that alterna-pop type music is big in commercials, Ad men realized that "Do you Realize" is a perfect commercial song. Its not selling out because its completely their style, and their intention was to create an anthem of carpe diem living, not to advertise for Ford. So they are fine in my book.
ReplyDeleteWeezer is just a travesty. I could never imagine in a thousand years that Raditude or Hurley could have artistic merit of any kind. This is selling out. This isn't them. They aren't making this for value or to express themselves, but to be popular again. The Green Album isn't bad because it was nothing like Pinkerton, its bad because it is a shit album without motivation.
To me, Flaming Lips did not sell out with the commercials in anything but the technical sense of the term. For popularity, Weezer is technically more popular now than they ever have been. And I never really bothered to get Raditude or Hurley- I don't like what I've heard from them as much as I like a lot of other things, so they're fairly low-priority. I still maintain that Weezer is held to a much higher standard than other bands- even though their music is much better than most of the music on the radio, it's still the type of music that you'd hear on the radio. They succeed in this area, but are still expected to produce content more similar to what they used to produce.
ReplyDeleteThe Green Album is not my favorite album, but I wouldn't say it's a shit album per se. It's got some pretty decent songs- photograph, knock down drag out... Although they do tend to sound quite similar.
I think that in ten years, we will look back on Weezer's recent albums as we look back on Huey Lewis and the News: something clearly produced to make money and be universally liked, but good both because and in spite of that fact. The position that Weezer has not sold out is an untenable one- the way their music has changed does feel like a business decision. But if they can still make music that sounds good, then we can find a way to appreciate it. The Blue Album and Pinkerton are the two best, but in the end I think we'll find that sometimes, as Huey Lewis puts it, it's hip to be square.
my big point here is that The Green Album wasn't when they sold out. The Green Album was just another punky album instead of a Weezer punk album, which is my problem with it. It was a precursor to their actual full blown selling out with "Beverly Hills". They wanted mainstream acceptance and ditched their ballsy experimental side. Like making Pinkerton at all took an unmeasurable amount of bravery. They risked ostracizing their entire fan base. And they did. They did the complete opposite of selling out, and it didnt pay off right away, so it seems to me like this scared them into being safe and just focusing on being commercial for the rest of their career until this point. Of course they still made some good songs, but they have so many terrible ones that its very hard to keep respecting them as an artist these days. My point can be summed up in one sentence: the band would never have made a song like "If youre wondering if i want you to" before they had been scarred by the failure of Pinkerton.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm aware I am posting on this thread nearly 9 years later but I do agree with what you are talking about here. I've been a fan of Weezer for awhile now, and I did some experiments on their music. I'll listen to a song from Pinkerton (My favorite album) and then compare it to some of their newer songs. Sure, almost 6 albums have been released since this blog post was created. I say, all the albums (Except Teal, since its just covers) have been created under the influence that "Hey, it'll make us money" but then they realize that 90% of their fanbase were fans back in 1994-2004 (with the exception of about 40% of Weezers fanbase is under the age of 18) asking "What happened to what you guys wanted back in 1994 and 1996?" To even think that Weezer though giving up their own sound for ratings and money just really upsets me. But, in my opinion, Beverly Hills isn't that bad but it definitely isn't the Weezer I know and love.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote my exact thoughts.
ReplyDeleteIt is certainly a crime to be able to make amazing rock, and then pop out with goofy shit. I hope they burn in hell for the waste and abuse of talents.
ReplyDeleteIt is also so "un rock star" to be so affected by others opinion and critics of pinkerton. You made an album, fuck what people think of it.
ReplyDeleteWeezer fell of so hard that a decade later I'm still trying to figure out how it happened. How do you make the blue and pinkerton, and then the recent bull shit? It makes no sense. What happened to these guys? Drugs can't even explain a fall like Weezer.
ReplyDelete