Weezer Strikes Back
The Interwebs have been buzzing recently about a new viral video that deals with the very thing that the Interwebs love the most: Self-parody. The video is, of course, the music video for new single Weezer’s “Pork and Beans.” The video has references to, among other things, Mentos and Diet Coke, Chris Crocker, the Star Wars Kid, the dramatic prarie dog, Chocolate Rain, and… Oh just watch it for yourself:
This isn’t the first time Weezer has made a clever video- Buddy Holly, Island in the Sun, Keep Fishin’ are similarly come to mind as videos that could have taken YouTube by storm, and Undone (The Sweater Song), El Scorcho, and Hash Pipe all had great videos in their own right. Nor is this isn’t the first time Weezer has made a splash on the Internet- for a long time they have had one of the best maintained and informative web sites on the web, they have a history of releasing MP3’s of songs that are unreleased, works in progress, or old demos from projects that never turned into fruition (I have about 2 gigs of Weezer MP3’s, most of which I got from weezer.com), and Rivers Cuomo was one of the first adopters of MySpace, blogging there as far back as 2004 (back in the pre-Fox days). This video, mixed with it’s internet appeal and a forthcoming album, represents a chance for Weezer to be relevant again.
This may seem like strange statement. It could be argued that Weezer has never been more relevant. Their last album, Make Believe, went platinum. The album’s first single, Beverly Hills, was the second most downloaded song on iTunes in 2007, behind only Gwen Steffani’s “Holla Back, Girl.” The album’s third single “Perfect Situation” was the band’s most successful single to date. It hardly seems like this is a band seeking relevancy in any way, but then we remember that this is Weezer. This is the band that gave us The Blue Album and Pinkerton, horned-rimmed glasses and sweater vests. Make Believe felt like nothing more than a slap in the face to the fans who wanted songs about girls, surfing, and crappy childhood memories. Don’t get my wrong, I love Elisha Cuthbert, but what the fuck is she doing in a Weezer video? If you want any more proof that Weezer has lost it’s core audience, look no further than the nerdiest, most self-indulgent, hipster-centric music website on the internet, Pitchfork, and their scathing review of Make Believe.
That’s why this video gave all of us Weezer nerds a glimmer of hope. It showed that while they were writing shitty songs, and then caving to MTV’s pressure to make their shitty songs even shittier they might be paying attention to all the memes and lulz on the internet that we’ve been watching wondering what the fuck happened to the band that defined our junior high and high school years. Yeah, it’s all stuff that South Park already made a joke about and they didn’t push the bound and include 2 girls 1 cup or go all out and get Rick Astley, but it’s a lot better than anything off Make Believe.
A Theory
Now that the Red Album is out and I’ve listened to it a couple times, I can honestly say that it was exactly what I expected. It’s what I’ve been expecting it to be since 2005. Not because I created an expectation for this album based on Make Believe, but rather because that’s when I saw Star Wars: Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith. Allow me to explain this by introducing a theory:
Theory 1.1 – The Weezer-Star Wars Theory
A general observation about nature that Weezer allbums and Star Wars films tend to mimic each other in their general awesomeness, or lack of said awesomeness.
This theory, much like the theories of evolution, global warming, and plate tectonics, is based on observation and empirical data, and will probably never be rigorously proven. But much like evolution, global warming, and plate technonics, any predictions made based on this theory are almost certain to come true. After watching Revenge of the Sith, I could immediately predict that Weezers next album was going to be better than their previous two, but not quite as good as the decidedly slightly better than mediocre Green Album. I knew this because Revenge of the Sith was better than the previous two Star Wars films, but not quite as good as the decidedly better than mediocre Return of the Jedi. To help illustrate this point, I have mad charts:
Weezer albums
Star Wars films:
The simple lesson to be learned by both Star Wars and Weezer is that if your awesomeness comes from your nerdiness, once you lose your nerdiness and became mainstream and boring, you can never completely regain your full awesomeness or nerdiness and are destined for mediocrity. In the words of Lester Bangs, actually I’m not completely sure if Lester Bangs ever said this, so in the words of the Lester Bangs written by Cameron Crowe and said by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the film Almost Famous “You’ll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.”
