Album Review: Weezer (The Red Album)

Do you remember when a new Weezer album used to be something worth getting excited about. Well, that time is long passed. I don't know what it is, but it seems as if Rivers Cuomo forgot how to write good music. I probably don't need to remind you how great he once was a crafting perfect pop songs about how miserable of an individual he was. Weezer's first two albums The Blue Album and Pinkerton are absolutely classics and among the two best albums of the 90's. Pinkerton, to this day, remains one of my absolute favorite albums of all time and not just the 90's. If he had stopped right here (when the band went on their first hiatus), Weezer would probably be mentioned alongside bands like Joy Division and Neutral Milk Hotel as the best bands ever to release only two albums. Unfortunately, Rivers and co. reunited and have been bombarding the public with utter shit ever since that (although The Green Album was okay, just not nearly as good as their first two albums).

Anyway, the new Weezer album sucks. And by that I mean it is absolutely terrible. The best song on it is "Pork and Beans", which would have probably been the worst song on The Green Album even. The rest of the album is forgettable and cliche at best and horrid and vomit-endusing at worst. The songs that Rivers doesn't sing come across like something that nickelback or staind would put out; but despite this, the worst song is actually one sung by Rivers - "Heart Songs". "Heart Songs" is nothing but Rivers running off the musicians that influenced him (from Gordon Lightfoot to Nirvana - with everyone in between including Debbie Gibson, Will Smith, and Slayer) set to completely bland music. The worst part though is the chorus, which sounds like something a middle-aged hippie third-grade music teacher would write for a song. It goes, "These are the songs, these are my heart songs, they never feel wrong ..." and so on. And just to show that that isn't an isolated example of shitty songwriting, the next song has the chorus, "Everybody get dangerous, everybody get dangerous. Boo Yah!".

My theory is that not only is Rivers Cuomo too content with life to write good music but that he's trying waaaay too hard to make his music overly-complicated, when he's best at writing simple, pissed-off pop songs. I won't even get into how awful "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" is. I'll just suffice to say that it sounds like he tried to make a "Bohemian Rhapsody" for the twenty-first century and wound up with an imitation of recent Green Day music (which isn't a good thing).

Don't waste your money on this.
Rating: 1/10