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Rivers Cuomo is a 53 year old singer-songwriter who is most well known for being the singer, frontman and lyricist of the American rock band Weezer. Weezer is most widely known for three of their biggest hits, each representing a different album and era of Weezer, mirroring Rivers Cuomo and his own personal state of health and wellbeing, Buddy Holly is Weezer’s first big hit, it’s meaning tied to Rivers Cuomos first girlfriend and his generally normal life. Island in the sun representing his emotional and social disconnect at the time, the song being incredibly happy despite his personal life being near the worst it ever was. Beverly Hills, the song that killed classic Weezer, generally happy sounding with surprisingly deep and thoughtful lyrics, Beverly Hills features none of that, and yet it’s their biggest hit to date, and it is one of their most simple and dumbed down songs, with little to no semblance of a meaning, Rivers Cuomo has been through a lot of struggles, and his songs help represent his growth as a person. Weezer is his emotional escape. Weezer is a power-pop rock band formed in 1992 by Patrick Wilson, Matt Sharp, Jason Cropper, and Rivers Cuomo. Rivers Cuomo is the singer, songwriter, and frontman of Weezer, and other projects including; Scott Rivers, a J-pop band, and his solo projects. Rivers had a rough childhood due to his parental issues, not fitting in, as well as other problems he had to face, such as his bullying. Rivers Cuomo was born on the 13th June 1970, his dad, Frank Cuomo was not there because he was at home watching the 1970 world cup, this is obviously a pretty big sign that Frank was not the best father. Despite Frank not being there, he decided on the name “Rivers”, a combination of three players in the match he was watching, Rivelino Riva, and Rivera, growing up his dad nicknamed him “Weezer” due to his Asthma. 5 years after his birth, his mother, Beverly Shoenberger and his father, Frank Cuomo divorced, from then until 1995 Rivers only saw his dad a handful of times, he was largely absent during his upbringing. After all of this Rivers met one of his other biggest obstacles, school, Rivers, and his friends were often bullied because of the way they dressed, and the music they listened to. During this time Rivers joined his friends band with him, his brother Leaves, and a mutual friend of theirs, they played exclusively Metallica covers, but his talent and passion was evident even this early on. One day one of the people that harassed Rivers and his friends confronted Rivers little brother, Leaves and challenged him to a fight, upon getting the news he was conflicted, he wanted to help, but also didn’t want to be beaten by him and make a fool of himself, especially not in front of his brother who looked up to him, in the end he did nothing, and when his brother came home looking absolutely devastated and pathetically bloody, he carried the guilt with him until 2003 when he formally apologized and wrote the song “I was scared” about the event. Rivers and Leaves fought a lot, this is referenced in “Say it ain’t so”, as well as his dads alcoholism, and fear his stepdad would also leave after he found a bottle of beer in the fridge, since Rivers attributed his parents' divorce to his father's alcoholism, so this stressed him immensely, In 1994, Weezer had finally completed an album, it was self-titled but retroactively known as the “Blue album” to fans and Weezer alike, due to the album featuring, all the band members posing in front of a cool-blue backdrop. The album was an instant hit, soon the lead single, Buddy Holly was playing on radios worldwide, due to this their record label, Geffen thought they should go and tour the album, during this time period Rivers had become disillusioned with the rockstar life, realising it wasn’t what he had hoped it would be, because of this he began to think about returning to school for a higher education, more specifically degrees in classical composition, and English literature, Rivers also found himself a lot richer than he was before, because of this and his growing unhappiness with his life coupled with his desire to return to school lead Rivers to temporarily quit Weezer after touring the Blue album for 6 months straight. Rivers used the Weezer money to get corrective height surgery to fix his height imbalance, by 1995 his right leg was 2 inches bigger than his left, the procedure involved a large metal brace being on hs leg at all times as well as his bone being forcibly broken so when it healed back it would be bigger, this and the fact that his Harvard studies required him to be almost always working led to Rivers spiral into depression. He had no friends, was always in excruciating pain due to his leg, couldn’t walk without crutches, and was incredibly lonely. Between his classes he would manually have to tighten the screws on his brace, take painkillers and then use the remaining time to try and rest. During this time he stopped using his crutches and instead started using a cane, switched his contacts for glasses and grew a long beard, this led to him looking far, far older than he was and physically shown how he was feeling mentally. During the height of his depression he had a new idea for an album, a space rock opera concept album called “Songs from the Black Hole” inspired by plays like “Madame Butterfly” he was studying while at Harvard, however he scrapped it due t it being far too convoluted, being more of a musical than an album which would’ve made it very hard to convince his bandmembers to record it. However most of the songs from “Songs from the Black Hole” were recycled, but slightly changed to fit into Rivers new album idea, “Pinkerton”, “Pinkerton” retained much of the themes of “Songs from the Black Hole” like, unrequited love, loneliness, relationships, and more generally love, but turned it further into a concept album than a musical. Eventually once he had left Harvard to pursue the rockstar lifestyle yet again, and had rejoined Weezer, ending his musical hiatus. On the 24th of September 1996 Weezer released “Pinkerton”, their second studio album, however upon release it was immediately touted as a crude attempt at an album by many critics and fans alike, Rivers himself calling it a “hideous record” and comparing it to “getting really drunk at a party and spilling your guts in front of everyone and feeling incredibly great and cathartic about it, and then waking up the next morning and realizing what a complete fool you made of yourself.” Rolling Stone magazine readers voted it as the second worst album of 1996, while outsiders were extremely harsh on the album, Rivers himself was probably its biggest critic going on to say in 2001 that “It's just a sick album, sick in a diseased sort of way.” and all of this criticism was not healthy, especially since Rivers Cuomo was already not doing well mentally, all of this stress caused him resent the album and, to an extent himself. Rivers believed he wasn’t a good songwriter, and that the only reason Weezer had took off in the first place was the “Buddy Holly” music video which was a parody of the TV show “Happy Days”, despite this he wanted to try and prove everyone, including himself wrong, and make another successful album, Weezers third album had no clear purpose or meaning other than to be the anti-Pinkerton, extremely cleanly produced songs with surface level meanings about relatable topics. However the way “Pinkerton” is seen now compared to how it was on release is night and day, contrary to everything said at the time it is now often considered Weezer’s best, or second best album. Many publications have retracted their staments about the album and now consider it one of the best of the 90’s. Pinkertons commercial failure was a turning point for Weezer and Rivers Cuomo, it led to the Green album being a mostly substanceless album made to appeal to as many people as possible so Rivers Cuomo could see that a pop-based Weezer was the only way forward that made any financial sense, and thus led to Weezer experimenting with their sound far less. Rivers had mostly overcome his mental struggles by the time of the Green album, however he was still struggling with addiction, and instead of being able to use his emotions as a vehicle for songwriting, expressing himself in a way that was truly poetic, with Rivers himself almost literally being the trope of the “tortured artist”, he had started putting up a facade where nothing was never wrong. The songwriting process for the Green album was extremely simple, being mostly nonsense or whatever he thought up after taking high doses of ADHD mood regulating medicine, and several shots of tequila while sitting outside in a garden chair. Suffice to say, Weezer had lost any semblance of a meaning in most of their new songs, the worst example of this by far is the song “Crab” a song that is not only stupid, but doesn’t even make sense when you think about it for more than a second, Crab’s lyrics consist of the same 9 sentences being repeated over and over again with examples of the lyrical incompetence Rivers claimed existed in Pinkerton rearing their ugly heads in the album that followed. In Weezer’s 5 year hiatus between 1996 and 2001 the longtime bassist and background vocalist for Weezer, Matt Sharp had left to work fulltime on his own band “The Rentals” and their new album “Seven more minutes”. Because of Sharp’s departure Weezer had to find a new bassist, and fast. Mikey Welsh, a longtime friend of the band members agreed to temporarily fill the role as bassist until the Rentals new album had been completed and thus Sharp could return. However, during this time Rivers and Matt Sharp had a growing disdain for eachother, and so even though “Seven more minutes” was finished 2 years ago by the point that the Green album was being recorded, Matt never said anything about coming back, and so he unofficially left the band, with Mikey taking the spot as full-time bassist until they found a replacement, which happened to be after the Green album, meaning Mikey became the newest member of Weezer. The Green album, which is also officially self-titled and known as “Weezer (2001)” despite this, it is far more well known as the Green album, and even Weezer themselves recognize it as such was released in 2001 and had 3 singles “Photograph”, “Hash Pipe”, and the indefinitely more well known “Island in the sun”. Being Weezers big comeback Rivers believed that if he was wrong about Weezer only working as a pop band, then Weezer just didn’t work at all, the Blue album being a fluke. This meant there was no going back to the more alt-rock sound Weezer used to have, in favour of a power-pop one. Island in the Sun was the prophetic song that unfortunately convinced Rivers of his self-disillusioned opinion that Weezer had no other way to go forward, than pop-rock, “Island in the Sun” was and is, immensely popular and successful, even more so than “Buddy Holly”, Island in the sun featured in 4 movies, and has a massive 800 million streams on Spotify alone, while this was ultimately good, as it meant Weezer continued in one way or another, it was still sad to see, because it did mean Rivers mindset had been fixed, and that Weezer had to chase trends to stay “current” instead of trying to be timeless. With the insane success of the Green album, Rivers realised that no matter how much thought and emotion had been put into a song, the vast majority of people will still just see it as a song. Ultimately while there is a market for people that are more attracted to these kind of songs and albums, in general people just want happy music, and as such it’s much, much, harder to make a downtrodden song do nearly as well as an upbeat song. However, due to fans online, the cult following for Pinkerton was growing by the second, and as such Rivers began to regain some confidence, and decided to make another album for that niche, another alt-rock album only made to appeal to the quintessential Weezer fan. That album was called “Maladroit”, Maladroit began recording almost immediately after the release of the Green album, at which point they decided to solely focus on new songs, even when touring, around this time in late 2001 Mikey Welsh’s mental health began to deteriorate and eventually lead him attempting suicide via drug overdose as a result of undiagnosed BPD, drug abuse, and constant touring, because of this he had to leave the band, because he was no longer mentally stable and needed support, Mikey Welsh never rejoined the band and unfortunately died from a drug overdose in 2011. Because of this, Weezer needed a new bassist, and they eventually settled on Scott Shriner who has remained as the bassist ever since. Other than this unfortunate upset, the recording process for the album was exceptionally smooth and natural, with most of the songs being older demos from the 90’s, specifically the Pinkerton and Harvard era. Karl Koch, a long-time helper of the band encouraged Rivers to upload the demos to the bands websites to see which demos fans liked, and which ones to make into full songs and then eventually make it onto the new album, this made Rivers realise that there was still a market who enjoyed the older style of Weezer, however the band still stayed more pop-influenced for the rest of their existence, but occasionally they still have more classic rock styled songs. Maladroit, was named by a fan after a competition due to the album having connotations of awkwardness, incompetency, and general feelings of dissapointment. Maladroit was ranked the 8th best album of 2002 by Rolling Stone readers, in stark contrast to Pinkerton being rated the 2nd worst album of 1998. However Maladroit was not very financially successful despite its universal praise, this was because the Green album had already alienated the Pinkerton style of fan from listening to Weezer, and because this didn’t appeal to the Green albums fanbase they were left with very very few diehard fans for this album, this further reinforced River’s opinion of pop being the only way forward. Rivers had described their next album as “a combination of the Green album and Pinkerton if that's possible!” During this time the album had no official name, however it was colloquially known and referred to as “Album 5” for self-explanatory reasons, unlike Maladroit, Album 5 was going to have a much slower, and hopefully more exciting production process. Beginning in 2002, almost directly after the release of Maladroit, Album 5 demos had started appearing on the Weezer website, these demos were much more similar in style to Maladroit than the Green album however. Eventually all of these demos were scrapped, but elements of them were retained in the final product, such as guitar riffs, or lyrics. Album 5 ended up being named “Maladroit” and was set for release in 2005, almost exactly half of the album was extremely personal and thought provoking, the other half being more pop-rock with nonsensical lyrics, for example one of the personal songs “The Other Way” was written for one of Rivers ex-girlfriends, Jennifer Chiba whose then boyfriend, Elliot Smith had just committed suicide, the song being about how he wanted to console her but was conflicted for his reasoning to do so, whereas the perfect example of a nonsensical song would be “Beverly Hills”, Weezer’s most popular song. Ever. Beverly Hills is a song about how Rivers wishes he could live in Beverly Hills and live like all the other celebrities, a fact of note is that Rivers only lived 60 miles away from Beverly Hills at the time of writing the song, which in other terms, on a not busy day, is about an hour drive, which is around the time it would take to drive to Glasgow and back from Blackburn. Beverly Hills was conceived when Rivers thought “how nice it would be to marry, like, an “established” celebrity and live in Beverly Hills”, which his then girlfriend, and future wife, Kyoko Ito must’ve had mixed feelings about. Beverly Hills ended up being the final turning point for Weezers transition into much simpler pop based songs. Weezers 3rd self-titled album, the Red album was the first fully removed from classic Weezer. The Red album was an attempt to stay into the mainstream at the time, which in retrospect makes it feel extremely dated, which makes it more and more irrelevant every year, for example the way they marketed the album was primarily through something called “The Weezer Youtube Invasion” the “invasion” consisted of the band showing up to record with youtubers for a day, the youtubers range in relevance today but the most recognisable are, Ray Willaim Johnson, FЯED, Tay Zonday, and The Annoying Orange, due to the time that has passed since then, almost none of these people are relevant anymore, and those that are, aren’t for good reasons. However, unlike other attempts to be hip and cool by the slowly aging band members, this one was favourable and fun, it was nice to see the band interact with at the time celebs in a mostly unscripted manner, however if they took it more seriously it probably wouldn’t have worked as well, one of the few things modern Weezer does right compared to 90’s Weezer, is being able to make fun of itself without also vilifying itself, recognising that the two aren't mutually exclusive, an example of this is when Buddy Holly was seen as a gimmicky novelty song, Rivers Cuomo got mad and upset, part of the reasoning as to why Pinkerton is more classical “hardcore rock” in an attempt to be taken seriously, ultimately this lead to good music but is an unhealthy mindset, something late Weezer has a lot less issues with. Red had 2 main singles, "Pork and Beans”, and “Troublemaker”, the Pork and Beans music video features youtubers from the Weezer invasion and performed well, however while it was still remarkably successful, one of Weezers most successful singles, it felt weird having the lead single to a new Weezer album that lacked a guitar solo. Troublemaker was a more classic Weezer single, however its lyrics left some questions to be asked two examples of this are “Marryin’ a beeyotch, havin’ seven keeyods” which is questionable for the spelling alone, never mind the meaning, another example would be “You wanted arts and crafts. How’s this for arts and crafts? (Rivers plays a guitar riff)” which really speak to the level Weezer lost their charm, and ultimately makes the song sound like it was written in one sitting. Overall, the Red album was very mediocre, it was inoffensive (mostly) and just kind of boring. Fortunately, their next album was a while away so surely, they would have new ideas to bring to the table! Weezers 8th studio album was named “Hurley” after the character from the TV show “LOST”, it released on the 10th September 2010 and its album cover is a photo of Rivers hugging Jorge Garcia, the actor who plays the titular “Hurley”, despite the name and album cover, this album has nothing to do with Jorge Garcia, Hurley, or Lost, so why was the album called Hurley? Rivers met Jorge Garcia backstage on a TV show set during the albums production cycle, and presumably they had nothing more interesting happen in that time period. I don’t say this to be rude, but because the album was conceived, written, and produced in less than a month, so in fairness it is quite impressive. Or at least would be if its two most memorable songs weren’t a “Viva La Vida” “Coldplay” cover from a concert and a song called “Where’s my sex”, despite the name, the song is about socks, but every use of the word “Sock”, or “Socks” is replaced with sex, Rivers was truly pushing the boundaries of what music could be in this album. Needless to say this is truly a far cry from classic Weezer. Hurley received very lukewarm reviews, and I can’t blame the critics, because if the album came out today I think everyone would be more confused than impressed. However given the extremely limited time, it is a passable album. Weezer had another hiatus, this time for 3 years, understandably they wanted a break after making an album in less time than was most likely humanely possible. However when they came back, it was with a bang. Their new album “Everything will be alright in the end” or “EWBAITE” was produced by Ric Ocasek which was already a good sign, seeing as he previously worked with the band to produce the Blue and Green albums. EWBAITE was a far more personal album than anything else Weezer had done in years, in some respects even more so than even Pinkerton, EWBAITE songs were split into three different categories relating to Rivers relationships, the categories were, The Panopticon Artist, Belladonna, and Patriarcha. The Panopticon artist is about Rivers experience with fans, specifically from the perspective of a 20-year-old male, Belladonna about Rivers experience with women, from the experience of a mid 20’s female, and finally, Patriarcha, about Rivers experience with father figures, from his own perspective in his 30’s, as well as a character called the “Magical Man”. EWBAITE is by fat Weezer’s most out there album, experimenting heavily with concepts and an overarching narrative, tied together by instrumental songs in each of the categories, “The Waste Land”, then “Return to Ithaka” and finally “Anonymous”, these all help tie the different categories into each other, to create a narrative from several viewpoints, almost bringing us back to the idea of Songs from the black hole, just less convoluted, even so the album is extremely complex, but it is designed in a way where a casual fan would probably not even pick up on these themes, or any of the narratives, a testament to River’s true artistic talents, which come out very rarely nowadays. Rivers, likely inspired by his Harvard studies originally wanted to name the album “Ecces Homo”, a reference to the book of the same name by famous philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, which would’ve been a perfect fit given the albums more scattered and deeper meaning, requiring specific conditions to experience it ideally. Following the idea that Rivers Cuomo can only make good music when traumatic things happen to him, the album received the best reviews any Weezer album had got since Pinkerton, and turned public perception of Weezer from that one gimmick band in the 90’s that won’t stop making mediocre music, into that one gimmick band from the 90’s that still has it in them, but only sometimes, I have joked but the situation around the albums songwriting was anything but, Rivers went back into a depression for a time, due to a series of traumatic events, starting with his tour bus carrying his wife, daughter, nanny, and assistant crashing in 2009, Rivers cracked three ribs and internal bleeding, Then former Weezer bassist, Mikey Welsh was found dead in a hotel bathroom in 2011, he had died of an overdose, assumed to be a suicide, Rivers grandfather also died as well as one of his ex-girlfriends and his meditation teacher, As if that wasn’t enough, he was separated from his family for around 5 months due to complications surrounding his son, Leo’s birth. Ultimately, he was able to recover much quicker this time and ended up being fine, however, this was truly the last time Weezer would produce anything worthwhile, and as such works well as a point to stop at, seeing as 4,000 words is already a bit excessive, and we only got to the 9th album, 9 out of 19 being almost halfway works as a natural stopping point. In Conclusion Rivers Cuomo is a deeply troubled man with a surprisingly dark and tragic story, which isn’t often told, however that only adds to his songwriting talent, allowing him to express his struggles and emotions, putting them into the form of song and dealing with them in the progress. Rivers Cuomo hasn’t been able to catch a break his whole life and still hasn’t to an extent, with nothing the band has produced since EWBAITE performing better, however this year it is the Blue Album’s 30th anniversary so there will almost definitely be a massive tour for it. In the end Weezer is a band which has produced many songs, for many different types of people, but they have always, and always will be for outcasts. Weezer is not really liked by anyone, not even their fans, not even me, and yet I care enough to write all of this, because even though I don’t think they're the greatest band ever, I do think they’re incredibly overlooked due to them only really having 3 successful songs, all of which not sounding similar to each other, or the rest of the album it's on, a result of Weezer’s throw everything at the wall to see what sticks strategy. In the end, Rivers Cuomo is an incredibly strong person to continue his career after everything he has been through and will always be an inspiration for anyone in a similar situation mentally, or even aspiring musicians. Weezer is not perfect, by far, but they are a very interesting band with a very interesting story, however Weezer has likely done worse for Rivers than it has positives, especially given his multiple periods of depression, especially the Pinkerton period, given it was caused almost entirely by fans and bad reviews, the man really couldn’t even get a break then, but even in his darkest hours, his creativity and artistic ability still shined through, and the end result was his best work by far. Rivers is ultimately a great role model because of his extremely positive outlook despite everything that went wrong in his life, nothing held him back from pursuing his dreams, not bullies, not money, not record labels, not fans, and not even himself, and today at 53 years old, he still performs live and is loved by many. Weezer is a band founded and crafted by Rivers Cuomo, the other band members work is undeniable, but Rivers truly shaped Weezer into the band everyone knew and loved. Rivers Cuomo is a 53 year old singer-songwriter who is most well known as being the singer, frontman and lyricist of the American rock band Weezer, but he is also a Dad, a Mentor, a Husband, and a Role model.