The band is best known for their successful singles "Buddy Holly", "Say It Ain't So", "Undone – The Sweater Song", "Island in the Sun", "Beverly Hills", "Memories", "Perfect Situation" and "Pork and Beans". The band's eighth studio album, Hurley, was released on September 14, 2010 on Epitaph Records. Additionally, a deluxe release of their 1996 album Pinkerton and a compilation of rare and unreleased songs titled Death to False Metal were released on November 2, 2010. They also plan to release a new studio album in 2011.
History
Formation and debut album (1992–1995)
Pinkerton (1996–1997)
On hiatus (1997–2000)
Rivers Cuomo returned to Boston, Massachusetts, but took a break from Harvard to focus on songwriting. Cuomo gathered Boston-area musicians and rehearsed new material, including possible songs for the next Weezer album. The group, referred to by fans as the Rivers Cuomo Band, had several different lineups and played several shows at local clubs, including their first show at T.T. the Bear's on October 8, 1997. Future Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh was a constant of the group's evolving lineups. Pat Wilson eventually flew to Boston to sit in on drums. The Boston songs were later abandoned and not used on the next Weezer album, but live recordings of the Boston shows are openly traded on the internet. In February 1998, Rivers left Boston and returned to Los Angeles.
Pat Wilson and Brian Bell joined Cuomo in L.A. to start work on the next album. Matt Sharp did not rejoin the band and officially left the group in April 1998. The group decided on Mikey Welsh as Sharp's replacement. Weezer continued rehearsing and cut demos until the fall of 1998. Frustration and creative disagreements led to a decline in rehearsals, and in late fall of 1998, drummer Pat Wilson left for his home in Portland pending renewed productivity from Cuomo. Rivers Cuomo went into a period of admitted depression, painting the walls of his home black and putting "fiberglass insulation all over the windows and then black sheets of fiberglass so that no light could get through.The band would not reunite until April 2000, when the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan offered Weezer a high-paying gig to play in August 2000. The festival served as a catalyst for Weezer's productivity, and from April to May 2000, the band rehearsed and demoed new songs in Los Angeles. The band returned to live shows in June 2000, playing small unpromoted concerts under the pseudonym Goat Punishment. In June 2000, the band joined the Warped Tour for eight dates.
Renewed popularity and The Green Album (2000–2001)
Eventually, the band went back into the studio to produce a third album. They chose the title, Weezer (2001), to repeat the self-titled name of their first release. This album quickly became known as "The Green Album" due to its distinctive bright green coloring. Shortly after the release of the album, Weezer went on another American tour. They attracted a new generation of fans thanks to heavy MTV rotation for the videos of their hit singles "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun".
Maladroit (2002–2003)
The recording was also done without input from Weezer's record label, Interscope. Cuomo had recently had what he then described as a "massive falling out" with the label. In early 2002, well before the official release of the album, the label sent out a letter to radio stations requesting the song be pulled until an official, sanctioned single was released. Interscope also briefly shut down Weezer's audio/video download webpage, removing all the MP3 demos. Online Weezer fans staged a brief protest, with several websites proclaiming "Free Maladroit".
In April 2002, former bassist Matt Sharp sued the band, alleging, among several accusations, that he was owed money for cowriting several Weezer songs. The suit was later settled out of court.
As soon as Maladroit had wrapped up, the band immediately began work on their fifth album, recording numerous demos between tours (often recording as many as 24 songs in a day). These songs were eventually scrapped, and Weezer took a break after the release of two albums in quick succession. During this break, Bell and Wilson released LPs from their respective side projects Space Twins and The Special Goodness.
Weezer released their much-delayed first DVD on March 23, 2004. The Video Capture DeviceMaladroit's Enlightenment Tour. Compiled by Karl Koch, the DVD features home video footage, music videos, commercials, rehearsals, concert performances, television performances, and band commentary. The DVD was certified "gold" on November 8, 2004.
Make Believe (2003–2006)
From December 2003 to the fall of 2004, the members of Weezer recorded a large amount of material intended for a new album to be released in the spring of 2005 with producer Rick Rubin. The band's early recording efforts became available to the public through the band's website. The demos were a big hit, but none of the songs recorded at this time were included on the finished album. That album, entitled Make Believe, was released on May 10, 2005. Despite commercial success, Make Believe got a mixed reception from critics, receiving an average score of 52 on review collator Metacritic. Although some reviews, such as AMG's, compared it favorably to Pinkerton, others, among them Pitchfork Media's score of 0.4 out of 10, panned the album as predictable and lyrically poor.
The Red Album (2007–2008)
On May 30, 2008, the Toledo Free Press revealed in an interview with Scott Shriner that Weezer would be unveiling the "Hootenanny Tour", in which fans would be invited to bring their own instruments to play along with the band. Said Shriner: "They can bring whatever they want...Oboes, keyboards, drums, violins, and play the songs with us as opposed to us performing for them."
The band performed five dates in Japan at the beginning of September and then embarked on what was dubbed the 'Troublemaker' tour, consisting of 21 dates around North America, including two in Canada. Angels and Airwaves and Tokyo Police Club joined them as support at each show and Brian Bell's 'other' band The Relationship also performed at a handful of dates. Shortly before the encore at each show, the band would bring on fans with various instruments and perform Island in the Sun and Beverly Hills with them.
At a show in Austin, after Tokyo Police Club had played their set, Rivers was wheeled out in a box and mimed to a recording of rare Weezer demo, 'My Brain', dressed in pajamas and with puppets on his hands, before being wheeled off again. This bizarre event later surfaced as the climax to a promo video for Cuomo's second demo album, Alone 2.
At a show in Austin, after Tokyo Police Club had played their set, Rivers was wheeled out in a box and mimed to a recording of rare Weezer demo, 'My Brain', dressed in pajamas and with puppets on his hands, before being wheeled off again. This bizarre event later surfaced as the climax to a promo video for Cuomo's second demo album, Alone 2.
Rivers Cuomo also wrote a song with pop duo Aly & AJ, and was very pleased with the way the girls worked. It is unknown if the song will be made public on an album.
On December 4, iOS developer Tapulous released the game Christmas With Weezer, featuring gameplay similar to Tap Tap Revenge and six Christmas carols performed by the band. A digital EP featuring the songs, entitled "Christmas with Weezer", was also released on December 16, 2008.
Raditude (2009–2010)
Weezer toured with Blink-182 in 2009, including an August 30 stop at the Virgin Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. Drummer Josh Freese joined Weezer on a temporary basis to play drums on the Blink-182/Weezer tour while Pat Wilson switched to guitar. Wilson said in an interview for Yahoo! Music that Cuomo wanted "to be active and more free on stage and him having guitar on was an impediment." Freese stated he was a Weezer fan and did not want to pass up the opportunity to play with them.Raditude's album artwork was revealed on September 11, featuring a National Geographic The record's release was pushed to November 3, 2009, where it debuted as the seventh best-selling album of the week on the Billboard 200 chart. The band scheduled tour dates in December 2009 extending into early 2010 to coincide with the new album's release. On December 6, 2009, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was injured when his tour bus crashed in upstate New York due to black ice. Cuomo suffered three broken ribs, and his assistant broke two ribs. His wife, baby daughter, and their nanny were also on the bus; however, they escaped injury. Weezer cancelled tour dates the following day. The band resumed touring on January 20, 2010. contest-winning photograph of a jumping dog named Sidney.
In December 2009, it was revealed that the band was no longer with Geffen Records. The band stated that they would still release new material, but they are unsure of the means, whether it be self-released, released online, or getting signed by another label. Eventually, the band was signed to the independent label Epitaph.
The band also recorded a cover of "I'm a Believer" for the movie Shrek Forever After.
Weezer co-headlined The Bamboozle in May, 2010, and performed at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee in June. In August, 2010, Weezer performed at the Reading and Leeds Festival, and performed at the Voodoo Experience festival in New Orleans, LA in October 2010.
On June 11, 2010, the band released a new single, "Represent". The song is said to be an "unofficial US anthem" to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Hurley and Death to False Metal (2010–present)
In August 2010, the band announced that their next album would be titled Hurley and was released on September 14, 2010 through Epitaph Records. The name comes from the character Hugo "Hurley" Reyes from the television show Lost. Jorge Garcia, the actor who portrayed Hurley, stated that being featured on the album cover is "one of the biggest honors of [his] career." Cuomo said of the album, "There's definitely going to be more raw rock energy on this one." Weezer used internet streaming service YouTube as a way to promote the album. Weezer loaned itself to 15 amateur online video producers, "going along with whatever plans the creator could execute in about 30 minutes." They have used many of the popular channels to promote themselves, such as Barely Political and Fred Figglehorn. The Gregory BrothersRep. Charles Rangel and President Barack Obama. Weezer calls the promotion "The YouTube Invasion". On November 2, Weezer released a compilation album composed of unused recordings spanning from various years, Death to False Metal (formerly titled Odds and Ends). Cuomo stated that the album consists of, "songs that didn't make the first seven Weezer records because they were either too weird or too pop or too metal or too punk." In describing the album, Cuomo said, ""With ‘Death to False Metal,’ none of those songs had been heard before. It’s not a standard rarities collection, in that these songs were not actually B-sides or released anywhere. They’re just songs that we had started recording at one point, but for one reason or another couldn’t finish up, or we finished them but they just didn’t belong on a record. So in a sense, it was extremely fun and easy because there’s all this material that I love, and it felt like the bulk of the work was already done. I get to go in now, in some cases, years after having started the songs and with a totally fresh perspective and tons of energy. It’s so easy to figure out — oh, obviously there’s supposed to be a solo here, so I’ll just edit that in. Or that lyric was all wrong. Let me fix that. Or let me put a harmony here, and it very quickly came together and it was quite a lot of fun."
On November 2, 2010, the band released a deluxe version of Pinkerton, which includes "25 demos, outtakes and live tracks." A third volume of Rivers Cuomo's solo Alone series, entitled The Pinkerton Years is also planned for release.
Weezer have begun work on a new studio album. Cuomo explained, "I was talking to the producer and he was saying, 'These songs sound totally different from Hurley. That was kind of dark and the new songs sound like you're 16, riding your bicycle to get a Slurpee.'"
Weezer embarked on a 6 city “Memories Tour” on November 26, 2010 through January 21, 2011 to celebrate the release of the deluxe edition of their second album Pinkerton. Each tour stop was done over 2 nights with the first night playing “The Blue Album” in its entirety and the second playing “Pinkerton” (with the exception of Las Vegas which played both "The Blue Album" and "Pinkerton" in one night). The shows started with a greatest hits sets followed by the albums played in their entirety. The initial cities on this mini-tour were: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas.
According to Rivers' Twitter, Cuomo is writing new material.
Weezer will be headlining this year's annual Riot Fest in Chicago.
Solo work
Lead singer Rivers Cuomo released a demo-compilation album entitled Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo on December 18, 2007. The album contains demos of Cuomo's that span from 1992 to 2007, including songs from Weezer's abandoned second album, Songs from the Black Hole.Brian Bell has been working on a solo project called The Relationship, and did not write any songs for Raditude in order to save more material for his solo work.
Cuomo's second demo album, Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, was released on November 25, 2008. The album includes further tracks from the scrapped Songs from the Black Hole, early versions of songs later released as full-band demos, amongst various other demo tracks.
Many members of Weezer have bands of their own. Brian Bell has collaborated with Space Twins and The Relationship, Mikey Welsh was in Juliana Hatfield, The Kickovers, Heretix and Jocobono Patrick Wilson was in The Special Goodness, and Matt Sharp was in The Rentals as well as performing alone under his own name.
Influence
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