Have you ever wondered what a well-known rock band like Weezer does after they've run out of ideas?
Admittedly, Rivers Cuomo had a pretty good run of hits, made some nice videos, but his unwillingness to disappear after inspiration long ago deserted him has brought his band, his fans, and Rivers himself to a place none of them ever imagined they'd be at this point.
If you'd have asked Cuomo back when The Blue Album could be heard blaring out of every Honda Civic hatchback and junior college dorm room in the country if his band would still be knocking around twenty five years later, his answer would have most likely been "Gee, I hope not."
That's because Rivers Cuomo, perhaps more than anyone, recognized early on the missteps that lead popular bands to become stagnant caricatures of their former selves, and, as a result, he decided early on that Weezer would not follow in Foghat's footsteps.
In fact, the band's next release, Pinkerton, was a direct response to that first wave of ginormous success that greeted them after the release of the "Buddy Holly" single. Suddenly, Weezer wasn't just a band signed to DGC Records, they were now the label's flagship rock act and, with that came heavy responsibilities to repeat that success.
The minute Geffen Records began hinting at wanting a Blue Album Part 2 to promote, Rivers put the band on-hold and enrolled at Harvard, where he began plotting his next album; a dark, dystopian rock opera.
Once he reunited with the band, the claustrophobic expectations of pop success were once again placed squarely on Cuomo's shoulders, resulting in the thrashy and dissonant album that, in Cumo's mind, would dispel any further talk of Weezer as a pop act.
That's right, ladies and gents, Pinkerton was meant to be a flop and, on that count, it succeeded beyond Cuomo's wildest dreams. Not only had the album not sold well, but the critics had savaged the album mercilessly, which Cuomo had not been expecting.
Instead of being happy to have his band all to himself again, Cuomo now realized that once you taste the success that had greeted The Blue Album, nothing else will do.
Suddenly, Cuomo's plans for a third album that would truly define what he and Weezer were truly about were tossed out the window in order to give DGC the sequel to The Blue Album that they'd wanted all along. Cuomo could not have been more literal in doing so, re-enlisting Ric Ocasek from the Cars as producer and recreating a modernized variation on the cover art from their debut album.
The self-titled third effort, nicknamed The Green Album, went Top 5 its first week of release and spawned the massive radio hit "Island In The Sun", thereby returning Weezer to their rightful place atop the mall rock heap.
Hilariously, in the year's since Pinkerton's release, the album had become a sort of "emo classic", leading Cuomo to believe that another album along those lines might actually be met with commercial success this time around. The resulting self-produced album, Maladroit, was released the next year and immediately sent Weezer's commercial stock into a free-fall once again.
Three years would pass before Weezer would return with their fifth album, Make Believe.
Arguably their best album since their legendary debut, Make Believe featured the Top 10 hit "Beverly Hills", but also Cuomo's most consistently solid batch of songs and quickly cruised toplatinum certification.
Predictably, Rivers responded by returning to Harvard for the third time since the band was formed.
While there, he seemingly hit upon a new concept for the band: What if we made a Pinkerton-sounding album, albeit with better songs, but give it an album cover reminiscent of the Blue and Green albums?
The self-titled Red Album hit store shelves in 2008, bringing with it whispers that Weezer was now engaging in self-parody. Additionally, though the album had entered the Top 5 in its first week, sales quickly ebbed and the album fell short of Gold status.
Behind the scenes, Cuomo the songwriter was coasting on fumes and, for the first time, allowed other members of the band to participate in the songwriting process.
For the next album, Raditiude, Cuomo was looking for hits and, thus, collaborated with a wide array of song doctors and producers, including Dr. Luke, Jermaine Dupri and Butch Walker among others.
The album also featured a cameo by rapper Lil Wayne on the hackneyed "Can't Stop Partying"..
Raditude's commercial failure led to a parting of ways between DGC, now owned by Interscope Records, and the band.
Hurley, featuring cover art that consisted only of a photo of actor Jorge Garcia from the TV show "Lost", saw Cuomo continue to work with an increasing number of noted song doctors such as Desmond Child, Rick Nowels, and Linda Perry, creating the first ultimately forgettable Weezer album.
Four years would pass before Rivers would sense a need to return to the simple sounds of The Blue Album yet again so Ric Ocasek's number was once again pulled from the Rolodex and the resulting album, Everything Will Be Alright In The End, was released in late 2014.
2015 saw the release of The White Album, another collection of formulaic co-writes, which debuted in the Top 10 in the US, but fell off the Top 100 in its third week of release.
In late 2016, Cuomo began writing material for a new album with Tobias Gad and Jonny Coffer, both of whom had co-written songs with Beyonce. Pacific Daydream arrived in late 2017 to polite, albeit mixed reviews, and their lowest chart showing since Pinkerton.
Worst of all, it didn't sound like a Weezer album.
Which leads us to the release of the band's latest self-titled effort, known as The Teal Album, which see Cuomo and the band essentially throwing their hands in the air and declaring "We are officially out of ideas."
While this all-covers collection was released with no advance warning, the band had been performing a-Ha's "Take On Me", Toto's "Africa", the Turtles "Happy Together" and Sabbath's "Paranoid" during their 2018 tour.
It goes without saying that no artist capable of writing their own hits would ever consider an all-covers record. As a result, no modern-day artist releasing an all-covers album has ever come back from doing so to see their original material gain equal coverage.
Most notably, Annie Lennox's all-covers collection Medusa netted her sales of over two million copies in the US and a Grammy award for her cover of The Lover Speaks' "No More I Love You's", but her next album of original material, Bare, enjoyed no such success, leading Lennox to record two more all-covers albums, Songs of Mass Destruction and Nostalgia.
Maybe Rivers can get Ric Ocasek to produce Weezer's next all-covers record.
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