Its been a busy year for Rivers Cuomo, the 48-year-old frontman of Weezer.
And March 1 brings their latest (and long promised) self-titled record, known asThe Black Album.
I dont know if [The Black Album] will succeed at the goal.
Credit: Jeff Hahne/Getty Images
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This is your sixth chromatic album, afterBlue,Green,Red,White, andTeal.
Theres very little guitar.
I wrote all the songs on piano.
Atlantic Records
Weve been trying to make this record for several years.
Weve ended up putting out more normal records, just cause we werent able to figure this one out.
Without the big guitar, theres more room for reverb and different kinds of psychedelic effects.
And I look at it through a program called Mp3tag.
I press Go, and Mp3tag returns the ten matching demos I have.
Some of them extend back to my very beginnings in the early 90s.
But we reimagined it as this French-pop 60s thing with a drum machine.
On Byzantine,theres a line about Tennessee Williams in Stuart Weitzman boots.Thats easy, I didnt write that.
[Laughs] That song I wrote with Laura Jane Grace, from Against Me!.
On the track The Prince Who Wanted Everything, you have phrases like funk-rock riffs and paisley bones.
Is that song about Prince?It didnt start out to be about Prince.
I was such a big Prince fan from probably about age 20, even before Weezer started.
I just started tweaking the lyrics to make some Prince references.
Theres almost a bit of an Ozymandias vibe to that song…Yeah.
[Laughs] Thats funny, I was definitely thinking of that poem.
I probably read that in ninth grade.
Everything will be forgotten.
One more lyric question.
I think thats a very good rule of thumb for any artist.
Ive taken so many hits and had so many failures.
And still, I wake up the next morning, and Im super excited to get back to work.
In spite of the fact that that never comes true, I still have always believed it.
So, yeah, that really has thrown me.
And its taken me awhile to regain my faith.
We noticed that, recently, the crowd just goes crazy when I do that.
So it feels like maybe the audience is ready for some shredding again.
Van Weezeris in mortal combat withOkay Human, a record thats mostly done.
That ones totally different.
Its inspired by an album from 1970 calledNilsson Sings Newman.
Its all piano-based, but it has a ton of orchestration.
We just did the strings at Abbey Road.
Its just gorgeous melodies and extremely eccentric lyrics.
In the Africa music video, Weird Al Yankovic played you.
In the Cant Knock the Hustle video, Pete Wentz played Rivers Wentz.
Whod be your dream to play you in a Weezer biopic?Jason Schwartzman.
You guys were just at the Grammys, nominated forPacific Daydream.
But it was incredible.
They were so good, and so charismatic.
Ricky Martin completely mesmerized me.
I had the thought: I get why Weezers not up there.
This is on another level.
How do you mean?Weve never been that successful that were playing at the Grammys.
We havent been on a stage that big.
But most of the time Im thinking, Well get there someday.
We just gotta keep working.
Someday well play the halftime show at the Super Bowl.
We just gotta get the songs right.
We just gotta keep pushing.
These people are super entertainers.
And Im cool with that.
I dont quite understand why.
I dont know how much I can take credit for it.
