Weezer - Make Believe
There are generally three ways a rock album can be successful and pleasurable to listen to:
- Catchy melodies
- Well-written emotional lyrics
- Well-written humorous lyrics
Generally, only one or two of these are required to make a good album. For example, Green Day produces "catchy" best, with occasional drops of "emotion" and "humor". Bowling For Soup produces "catchy" and "humor" well, but never touches "emotion". Strengths in one or two categories make up for the lacking areas.
Weezer's Blue album managed "catchy" incredibly well, with an occasional supplement from "emotion". In Pinkerton, they sacrificed a bit of "catchy", but strongly boosted "emotion". But the lead singer, Rivers Cuomo, is really screwed up, and decided that he didn't want to show Pinkerton's emotion anymore.
They went on hiatus for five years and wrote some incredibly good songs, but since Rivers has issues, he decided to scrap all of the interim work and write a new album from scratch in a few months. This became the Green album, which featured "Hash Pipe", "Island in the Sun", and a bunch of short, boring pop tracks. They still had "catchy", but it had been severely weakened, while their "emotion" was completely gone. Maladroit in 2002 continued the trend, but removed more of the "catchy" while adding an insignificant touch of "humor".
The new Make Believe is downright awful. There's no "catchy", "emotion", or "humor". I'll run through the tracks:
1. Beverly Hills
They chose this to be the first radio single? It's Rivers ranting like a spoiled teenager about how hard it is to grow up in Beverly Hills, with boring power chords and chorus-shouting in the background. This song is worthless, and it's certainly not radio-friendly, which will hopefully seal this album's fate.
2. Perfect Situation
The chorus doesn't contain any words. Instead, it's just a generic "ooooh hooow" repeatedly, and the verses are boring. The melody is somewhat catchy, but it's too slow and dull to be interesting.
3. This Is Such A Pity
Yes, it is. It's mildly catchy, but the background music sounds like late-80's bad synthesizer demos, and they include an annoying falsetto accompaniment.
4. Hold Me
"Hold me... Hold me..." Another slow, boring song with dull lyrics and music.
5. Peace
Another slow, boring song with a generic "ooooh ooooh ooooh hooow" chorus. You've already heard this song a hundred times.
6. We Are All On Drugs
"When you're out with your friends in your new Mercedes Benz, and you're... ON DRUGS!!!" This is actually the first line of this song, which I think is trying to convince people that being ON DRUGS!!! is bad. But that conflicts slightly with "Hash Pipe" a few years ago. This is just horrible. At least when other bands tackle this subject, they find creative and interesting metaphors like in "Master of Puppets". Knowing Rivers, he'll probably choose this as the next radio single.
7. The Damage In Your Heart
This is moderately upbeat, but it's as boring and repetitive as the filler tracks on the Green album.
8. Pardon Me
Slightly more upbeat, this song is almost decent. Almost. But it's still boring.
9. My Best Friend
Sounds like a Maladroit filler. Upbeat but unmemorable.
10. The Other Way
This happy-sounding song is decent. It's the only decent song on the entire album. But it's not great, and it's definitely not worth buying the album for. Rivers and the backup singers sound horrible.
11. Freak Me Out
Completely worthless. I almost fell asleep during this one.
12. Haunt You Every Day
"I am going to haunt you every day... haunt you every day..." With this song? I sure hope not. Rivers has apparently turned into a stalking serial killer. But this song won't really haunt anyone, since nobody will listen to it more than once.
Overall
From the steady decline of Weezer's music, I wasn't expecting much from this album. But this time, it really seems like they've hit rock bottom. Make Believe has no redeeming tracks, no appropriate radio singles, no songs to get stuck in your head, nothing to blast from your car stereo while driving down the highway with the windows down, and absolutely nothing worth remembering. The music is boring and the lyrics are repetitive and uninspired. Even the vocals are poor, with Rivers usually shouting instead of singing, and a proliferation of awful shouting or falsetto backups. I don't know what Weezer was thinking, but after hearing this album, I've finally stopped caring.