If there’s ever a band that has made severe enterprise out of performing juvenile, it could be Weezer. From the opening, upside-down shot of “Undone – The Sweater Song,” their 1993 debut single and video, to the Weird Al parody therapy of their video for “Africa,” launched on Monday (Sept. 24), Weezer have eschewed the tormented anguish of their alt-rock predecessors for a extra adolescent, self-deprecating ache.
When the “Undone” video first premiered on MTV, it was neither darkish and gritty like its rock contemporaries, nor flashy and arty like the brand new wave video stars of the channel’s early years. Directed by Spike Jonze, “Undone” was presented entirely in slow-motion, depicting the band on a blue soundstage. Mop-haired frontman Rivers Cuomo wails “I’ve come undone” whereas enjoying guitar and carrying a soccer jersey. Midway via, a pack of Golden Retrievers inexplicably runs throughout the display, and in the direction of the tip of the clip, drummer Patrick Wilson will get up and sprints round his drum set, banging on the cymbals as he goes. Instead of instantly confronting interior demons via provocative movies, like Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” or Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” Weezer handled themes of rejection, loneliness, and loserdom of their songs by pairing them with visible humor.
Some of this was unintentional. According to Rivers’ Edge, John D. Luerssen’s biography of the band, the seemingly jovial tone of “The Sweater Song” paradoxically got here from a spot of frustration. The one-take video needed to be shot over 25 occasions to get it proper; at one level, one of many canines allegedly defecated on Wilson’s bass drum pedal. Fed up with how the shoot was going, the band gave up on attempting to deal with it with any kind of seriousness.
It ended up working of their favor: The band’s winking humorousness and improvisation stood out in MTV rotation with out eclipsing their complete id. In subsequent movies with Jonze, Weezer precisely parodied the ’70s sitcom Happy Days in “Buddy Holly” and performed with wild animals on a sunny hilltop in “Island in the Sun.” They had been by no means as goofy as different Jonze collaborators like MC 900ft Jesus, however inheritor attraction rested in how they might snort at themselves whereas pining after women or wallowing in their very own ennui.
That comedic strategy to rock has considerably miraculously endured even because the style has pale in recognition, partially as a result of the Weezer/Jonze collaborations predicted the kinds of comedic YouTube movies and memes that will come to dominate tradition within the 21st century. Everything from OK Go’s mid-’00s attempts at virality to Migos and Drake’’s Soul Train-revising “Walk It Talk It,” launched in March, may very well be thought of descendants.
But Weezer hasn’t stopped participating with the web fan tradition that they helped to create. Late final yr, a 14-year-old fan from Cleveland named Mary Klym began a Twitter account known as @WeezerAfrica and commenced campaigning for Weezer to cowl the Toto traditional. Even although it was initially launched in 1982, the euphoric soft-rock music had gradually gained popularity with on-line millennials and Gen Z’ers as a respite from the post-election information cycle. Klym’s marketing campaign gained traction, and 5 months after she started tweeting, Weezer launched “Africa” onto streaming providers together with, bafflingly, a limited-edition vinyl urgent offered at Urban Outfitters.
Weezer’s “Africa” is a really simple cowl, and its video, weirdly sufficient, may very well be thought of the identical. It’s a near-exact reproduction of the “Sweater Song” video, full with the one take, the blue soundstage (mimicking the quilt of the band’s debut album), and the opening upside-down digicam flip. All that’s lacking, actually, are the canines. And there’s one other added element: Weird Al Yankovic performs Cuomo within the “Africa” video, lip syncing alongside to the phrases, enjoying accordion, and customarily performing like his trademark goofy self. (The remainder of the band are additionally doppelgangers, though all of them resemble how the band appears to be like now greater than how they regarded within the unique video.)
One look on the “Africa” video makes this apparent, however as Weezer has aged into rock music’s outdated guard, they haven’t precisely matured. And whereas that consistency has helped their fanbase keep devoted for over twenty years, it’s unsurprisingly introduced its justifiable share of skepticism. The identical number of misogyny-laced, poor-me-I-can’t-get-laid lyrics current on 1996’s Pinkerton can be found on songs as latest as 2015’s “Thank God for Girls.” It’s a trait that has made Cuomo’s awkward-nerd character, sadly, much more relatable to some listeners and fully alienating to others – whereas some older followers have taken subject with Cuomo’s forays into weird, surrealist lyrics that belie the self-seriousness of the band’s typical self-pity. Above all, there has all the time been the kind of music nerd who can’t stand Weezer’s appropriation of churning, heavy-metal guitar work into limitless, pop-friendly hooks.
What has allowed Weezer to stay round for therefore lengthy, other than a big cult-like following, is that the band has sufficient self-awareness to acknowledge their age and to develop, if not mature, into this present second of Internet virality that they helped construct the muse for a quarter-century in the past. Besides the plain silliness of protecting “Africa,” the meme music du jour, on the request of a fan, they’ve doubled down on this strategy of their movies. It’s becoming that Cuomo casted Weird Al to play him in “Africa,” as Yankovic occupies an identical cultural strata, through which he’s appreciated and beloved for enjoying the function of the jester within the music world. Even if he’s now not on the excessive level of his profession, he has constantly held this function for over three a long time, with no main lulls. Like Weezer, quite a lot of the continual love for Weird Al is born from nostalgia, however not like Weezer, Weird Al’s musical repertoire doesn’t have fairly as a lot baggage because of the causes talked about above. Cuomo casting Yankovic is, to a level, aspirational.
“Africa” was directed by Brendan Walter and Jade Ehlers, who’ve labored with Weezer on previous movies each individually and as a duo. You’ll discover there’s a standard thread to a lot of their work. Here’s the band impersonating Guns N’ Roses. Here’s Patton Oswalt lip-syncing within the Oval Office, whereas Cuomo acts as a Secret Service agent. There are different movies they’ve carried out, each with Weezer and bands like Fall Out Boy and Green Day, that parody traditional Americana/suburbia tropes; there’s one the place Cuomo is a cult chief; there’s another the place Cuomo (unsuccessfully) tries to make an interesting Tinder profile.
None of that is groundbreaking stuff, however it demonstrates a sure kind of tacky, self-deprecating comedy that’s excusable, and even inspired, for a band in Weezer’s place. Again, there’s an attention-grabbing alignment happening with the band casting themselves as traditional rock mainstays like Guns N’ Roses, or having a longtime comic like Oswalt lip sync their music from a performative place of energy. There’s an understanding, too, that self-promotion is now not a necessary ingredient to their movies. Cuomo’s bespectacled face now not needs to be the middle of each clip; he can don a wig and a dressing up, or he can hardly seem within the video in any respect.
More typically, Weezer is now embracing dumb enjoyable in a manner that feels just like the logical evolution of the dumb enjoyable they engaged in through the earlier components of their profession. They’re conscious that they most likely received’t be the following viral sensation — their time has handed for that — however the band is assuredly snug in mixing inside the higher Internet panorama as elder statesmen of its form. Hurry, boys, they’re ready there for you.
