AOTW: Weezer's Red Album

This album is shit. And not shit in a good way. Shit as in bad. It is terrible. I want to think of this as just a bad dream, but every time I go through my mp3 player it's there, looking at me, laughing. Like a genital wort, it may be hidden from public view, you might want to forget about it, but you know it's there, and you hate it and more strongly you hate yourself and the person who gave it to you.

Before this album I considered Weezer to on my mount Rushmore of favorite bands. With albums like pinkerton and the blue album, there was much to love. These were masterpieces created from the creative mind of Rivers Cuomo. I have spent so many hours listening to these tracks, enjoying the language coming from my speakers.

They went on a hiatus then returned in 2001 with the green album. Though short at only twenty eight minutes long, in my view, it was pretty good. Not as great as pink or blue, but met my standards for a good album.

Later Weezer released Maladroit, and then Make Believe. I like Maladroit for the thrash (metal) like guitar ballads, quite off the norm for Weezer.

Make Believe was their return to emotional cries of pain. At this point I felt that they have rebounded, that they were on an upward swing. Make Believe was great, I liked it thoroughly.

Not many people agreed with my view. They thought Weezer is over, dead after '96, they said. I never believed this. I just denied, denied, and denied. But were this album came out, I couldn't deny it anymore. The band i was envious of, what i wanted to be like was gone.

I denied their fall off for so long. Now in hindsight, I see the reason for such a long denial. Many bands suffer for follow up albums declining in quality, but i loved Weezer's albums so much that i could not believe they would fall. I believed that a magnitude of creativity so great as Rivers could not be ran dry, but with the release of the red album, i now see that it is possible. Creativity can run out, it does degrade when you get older, and someday I will become dull and unimaginative.

So why is this aotw when it so horrible that i want to forgot about it? Maybe i am hopeful that Rivers or anyone from the group will read this and see the disappointment a fan has after hearing this album and i hope that they will disprove me, and show that creativity is forever.

The Red Album, the sound of a good friend dying.