Weezer performing in 2015 at the Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, Connecticut. From left to rightː Brian Bell, Scott Shriner, Patrick Wilson, and Rivers Cuomo.
Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org
Hot on the heels of The White Album, Weezer has released a new single. It’s called “Feels Like Summer,” and people are pretty mad about it. Gone is the power pop sound found on the band’s past two releases.
On “Back to the Shack,” the lead single from 2014’s Everything Will be Alright in the End, frontman Rivers Cuomo made a number of promises to weary fans.
“Sorry guys, I didn’t realize that I needed you so much / I thought I’d get a new audience, I forgot that disco sucks.”
He seemed to be through with genre experimentation and fully set on returning to and sticking with the familiar alt-rock formula. For a short period, that was the case.
The White Album, released last year, delivered on that promise. Its sunny lead single “King of the World” was and continues to be celebrated for its fresh take on the sound that they established on the Blue album way back in 1994. “Thank God for Girls” had Rivers attempting some weird white-boy rap kind of thing, but ultimately, it was just as solid. Fans were relieved; this was what they’d wanted for years now. The old Weezer was back.
That contentedness didn’t last long, reverting to revulsion upon the release of “Feels Like Summer.” Go look at the music video’s YouTube comment thread if you want a laugh—angry fanboy vitriol everywhere, which makes sense. The song completely breaks the aforementioned promise that “Shack” made. Everyone, including myself, was expecting more alt-rock goodness. This slickly-produced auto-tuned sound was a surprise. They haven’t sounded this electro-poppy since that infamous track, “Can’t Stop Partying,” on their equally infamous album Raditude.
That’s not to say that the new single is a bad song, but unlike that garbage fire disaster, this song is competent—competently written, arranged and performed. It’s—dare I say it—a really great song. It easily could have been a flop, like so many of their previous endeavors in radio-friendly sounds, but it comes off as much more confident and self-assured. It’s primed for beach trip playlists, full of catchy, MGMT-esque hooks, and Rivers sounds uncharacteristically cool and cocky, if a bit aided by pitch correcting software.
So why the backlash? Perhaps all the negativity it’s getting stems from fear brought about by Raditude. Oh no, they’ve done the pop thing before, and look how it turned out. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.
Is “Feels Like Summer” an indication of what The Black Album (as it’s reportedly called) will sound like? Maybe, but maybe not. “Thank God for Girls” was the first track released ahead of The White Album, and that led everyone to believe we were in for a post-Limp Bizkit Durstian rap-rock nightmare (thank God we weren’t).
Rivers even divulged his plans for The Black Album’s sound last year in an interview with NME. “I think it’s going to maybe be like Beach Boys gone bad,” he said. God only knows what “Beach Boys gone bad” would even sound like, but what a concept that is. The Black Album is slated to release sometime this summer.
