Wtf is up with the transition from Pinkerton to the green album? What happened? If I had to guess, Pinkerton wasn't pop enough, didnt sell well, and the artists beaten over the head with pressure from suits and the poorly masked disappointment from friends and family who loved that sweet blue album money and didn't really care about art. The green seems almost "callous" or jaded. If there is any genuine expression from the artists it's certainly not to be found in a literal reading of the lyrics of any of the songs. It's like a whole album of Hook by Blues Traveler wrapped up in lab tested blue-album-flavored roll. If the artists really made the green album on their own as a response to feedback in a vacuum, Ill eat my hat. Some dude came in and told them exactly what to play to make a pop album. It came from outside/external forces as training or something. Someone decided the artists would be stars and gave them the rock band version of the "guidance" that cardboard product Disney stars get. And the music never seems to recover after this point. There were a few interesting moments but, I mean, I heard Pork and Beans... they clearly choose to hone green album philosophy and evolve from a foundation of green albumness as a general direction.So that is my guess. Am I right, is that how it works and how it happened to Weezer? Or did the guys get so fucking money hungry that they had the inspiration to produce the green album as a genuine professional display of capability? What was so wrong with the blue album that they couldn't "sell out" in that direction instead? I thought blue was beloved and had tons of radio play. Clearly they could achieve it again, they are plainly talented in terms of their ability to adapt to a deliberate style of presentation otherwise the green album would have been impossible.
Pinkerton was poorly received at its release and that led to Rivers having a mental breakdown and going full recluse for a few years. When he came back he went out of his way to make the green album sound as pop friendly as possible just to distance himself from that record since he wanted Weezer to go back to the Blue Album era. He's since come around to liking Pinkerton but for a decade he wanted to play it safe with his music just to win back his audience
TLDR Matt Sharp left the band, simple as.
>>128893846hot take; Pinkerton's way overrated, and even if you dislike the over pop pivot they took in the wake of it, the middling critical reception Pinkerton got upon release was entirely warranted
Who knows
>>128893964But I relate to the lyrics so much because I'm a yellow fever incel
The story about Pinkerton's reception at release and how it affected Rivers Cuomo is like one of the most infamous stories in rock music bro use google
>>128893964It's not perfect but that's kinda what makes me like it. I know I'm approaching "its good necause its bad" territory, but if it's true then what else can I say? Blue album wasnt perfect and I love going back to it from time to time. It's jard to play favorites between blue and Pinkerton because they are different and express different feelings/parts of life. I can understand Pinkerton receiving bad feedback because it was likely from a lot of people who related to the totally different experiences called upon by the blue album. What I didnt quite get before was that green was supposed to be going back to blue. I feel autistic now, because obviously that seems true. I guess I felt that it was more of an exploitation of a few high moments of blue. The same way Smash Mouth's Astro Lounge zoned in on the success of Walkin' on the Sun. It really doesnt feel like the same Weezer. I am perhaps irrationally convinced that they received a wrangler who told them exactly what to do, and that he brought in a lot of pop experience from outside of the artists brains and presented it to them as directions. Maybe I just have trouble believing Cuomo's way of presenting himself.
>>128893985Is blue not the incel album? I mean, Pinkerton constantly references numerous flippant and sexually driven relationships all throughout its playtime, does it not? Its basically entirely about being tired of having so many superficial relationships with various women
>>128894275Ah well, I'm not very sorry for typing my thoughts about some music on /mu/ instead of asking google. Googling it takes like 5 seconds, whereas I got like 15 minutes of pleasant relaxation out of writing a post, expressed something, superficially interacted with real human people who Im generally fond of, and learned something. I might learn even more too, if congersation wanders, whereas google would link or read to me from the fatigued necromantic corpse of The Rolling Stone or something. I think I know how to enjoy my life, and you can trust me, because I wrote all this shit.
>>128894341Blue was "virgin dork as a matter of fact", not necessarily mad about it. It just is what it is. Pinkerton is full of seethe.
>>128893892this
>>128893900And was replaced by Mikey Welsh, who was 100X the bass player Matt was, and was just as funny, if not funnier than him too. Shame he left when he did.
>>128894582Seethe is not the word I would apply. Angst and fatigue and suspicion work better to describe it. Even in Pink Triangle when he is directly butching about the girl not dating him, it's clearly because she's a lesbian and not because he's unable to get laid or find love.This is off topic but people are making a massive mistake by "giving" all lonliness and anger to "incel", the narrative buzzword. This is exactly what turns the fringe into mode and we are living the consequences of that, but lots of people are kind of thoughtless about the massive concessions that made it possible.
>>128894793>>128894582I know I sound neurotic but think about it: Pinkerton literally force feeds you with "Tired of THE SEX IM HAVING ALL THE TIME" for 30 minutes and you gave it to incels because "seethe". Enjoy the incel future where you just hand them literally any expression of testosterone related feelings.
people were creeped out by Rivers' horniness and just wanted cute radio rock tunes like the debut album
>>128894793>unable to find loveunable to find companionship, I meant
>>128894793>goddamn this business is really lame i gotta move to an island to find the truththe album is about being tired of meaningless sex and wanting real connection yet possibly being too fucked up by his mother so maybe he just needs to live in fantasy rather than have real love. he never solved this problem so he avoided it on future albums.
>>128894834>MomOkay, you got me there, that is kind of incel adjacent, but the entire album is seeped in his having sex too easily and too often. It's just a hard discrepancy to call it incel
>>128893846Rivers wanted money
>>128895087Sure but if they saw blue as "money" and they were aiming for that, they sailed past the target and hit more money instead
>>128895051i’m not calling it incel. my post was just for clarity on what you were ignoring. half the posters in here don’t know the lyrics by heart or aren’t big enough fans to read the diaries so they just say incel out of ignorant retardation. basically no point posting here, people will lie before admitting they are wrong and everyone just makes shit up rather than read
It's interesting to study the evolution of Rivers' work between Pinkerton and Green. The earliest stuff is more basic, but still great, still has the same magic as his best work. By summer 2000, he's dumbed his lyrics down to moon in June territory, but still makes some half hearted effort to write about vague angst. Also, his songs have a weird 70's rock twist around this era? The Green songs, which were written in the fall of 2000, represent him fully capitulating to lyrical monotony, nothing but the blandest of lyrics over rote musical bedding. Note that this process, and the success the band achieved, was part of a philosophy Rivers adopted in order to create good music. He was reading Nietzche and there was some bit that said "a man needs a cause" or something like that. Rivers took that to mean that he needed to conquer the world in order to be fulfilled and produce good music. Ironically, it ended up producing some of his most bland and disappointing work.
>>128894603And yet he had no influence on the band, and Matt Sharp made the first two Weezer albums into not only some of the greatest albums of all time but also the only Weezer albums that’s matter. Everything they made without him is total dogshit. Weezer could never make a song as catchy as Friends of P https://youtu.be/wi-H6ohY37k
What is the truth declared by the pink triangle?>Pink triangle on her sleeve, let me know the truth, let me know the truthBro the truth seems to be that she's a lesbian, you just said it lmao
>>128893846People fucking hated Pinkerton and it drove Rivers insane that what was pretty much the most honest and personal album he had ever made had such a negative reaction. Matt Sharp leaving and their attempts at recording a follow-up album falling apart around 1998 probably didn't help Rivers' mental state at all. The Green Album was meant to be a kind of return to form, Rivers went back to making cleanly produced pop music and tried to bury Pinkerton for a while.
