Still Weezer

You fall for someone, you end up falling for their music. A girl in Munich loved Weezer and I spent nights listening to Pinkerton, Raditude, Hurley, all of it. Songs like Beverly Hills and Perfect Situation got under my skin because they got under hers first. That’s how it works when you’re young. You’re trying to live inside someone else’s head.

Weezer’s been fractured for years, making albums that felt like they didn’t know what they wanted to be. Then the Africa cover happened and somehow that became a thing, changed how people thought of them. It was ridiculous and right at the same time.

Now Rivers and the band are putting out the Black Album and they’re confident about it, like they finally have something worth being confident about. The producer talks about them like they’re rubber—elastic, flexible, you can stretch them and they snap back. Rivers is pulling from social media, the Bible, Catch-22, throwing everything in. It’s scattered but it coheres.

I want to know if it’s what they think it is. I want to know if she would still love it. I want to be the kind of person who remembers a girl in Munich and the songs that came with her, who still gives a shit what Weezer sounds like.