Forum Overview :: No Stairway to Heaven :: Theories!

[quote name="Fullofkittens"][quote name="Fussbett"] Looking for more adjectives to describe why recent Weezer fails and old Weezer succeeds, I started to listen to some Pinkerton tracks. But then half an hour went by in no time and I had listened to the whole thing. Man they used to be great.[/quote] Weezer is going to remembered as the best guitar pop band of the 90s. I'm going to just come out and say it: the first two Weezer albums are better than the best two Nirvana albums. They stand up better. In ten years "Holiday" is still going to be rocking kids out when "Heart-Shaped Box" is going to be provoking barely-interested nods. My theory about Weezer and their precipitous fall from glory is thus: Gerry Goffin says that he can't really write as well as he used to because he's rich now. Good songwriting proceeds as a response to hardship. The hardship doesn't need to just be financial, since by <i>Pinkerton</i> Rivers Cuomo was already rich. But he had a terrible year: he went to music school at Harvard and found himself freshly rejected and alienated by a whole new set of hot half japanese girls. So <b>Theory #1</b> is the Goffin theory: Cuomo is just too comfy to make good pop music. He's a guy whose muse needs to be rescuing him from despair, and despair over creative lethargy apparently isn't enough. Also, he's like Goffin in another way: he's a lot older now, and musical motherfuckers' asses do not generally age like wine. <b>Theory #2:</b> Somewhere in there Rivers decided not to give of himself in his songs anymore. What really gives some weight to the first two records is that the songs masquerade as geek pop fun but there's disturbing confessional undercurrents. "Say It Ain't So" busts away from talk about surfing to briefly accuse the protagonist's stepfather of making him an alcoholic. And then there's awesome unison bends which are supposed to rock us out and make us laugh. <i>Pinkerton</i> is basically a huge vaguely uncomfortable frank and open deep conversation (it brings him down slow), including the yikes moment where Mr. Cuomo admits in a very non-Hagar-y way that he wishes he could fuck his underage fans. By contrast, the post-hiatus records are basically nonsequitors (sp?) following each other. They're impenetrable, lyrically. You can listen to the lyrics if you want but there's nothing rewarding about actually hearing them. That doesn't explain why the music isn't as good, except maybe in the way that, as he is not committed enough lyricallu, he's also not musically. <b>Theory #3</b> is the most obvious one, and probably the most correct: Matt Sharp left the band after <i>Pinkerton</i>, and without Kim Deal the Pixies become Frank Black and The Catholics. [/quote]