Pinkerton: the Weezer album Rivers Cuomo called “diseased”
The two most loved albums by Weezer are certainly their first two releases, the self-titled 1994 debut affectionately referred to as The Blue Album and its follow-up, 1996’s Pinkerton. The latter holds something of a cult following as it explored the inner emotional pain of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo.
Weezer themselves self-produced Pinkerton in order to better capture their live sound, departing from the overly-polished sound of their debut. However, upon release, the album received middling reviews and failed to meet commercial expectations.
In 1996, Pinkerton was voted as the third worst album of the year by Rolling Stone readers, although in the years following, it gained a higher level of critical appreciation. In 2001, Cuomo explained that the newfound cult following of Pinkerton had led to a “painful” feeling.
“The most painful thing in my life these days is the cult around Pinkerton,” Cuomo told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s just a sick album, sick in a diseased sort of way. It’s such a source of anxiety because all the fans we have right now have stuck around because of that album. But, honestly, I never want to play those songs again; I never want to hear them again.”
However, by 2010, it looked that Cuomo himself had started to reconsider his opinions on the record and how he felt about its critical reception following their debut. “It’s really hard for people to understand the life situation that inspired the song[s], and the critical reaction to that record was that these people are goofy,” he said. “They said there was no depth of emotion there. That really bummed me out in a big way, so I was determined to head in the other direction with the second record and, in the simplest, most direct language possible, talk about what was happening in my life and how I felt about it.”
Then, in 2021, Cuomo noted that the “pain” expressed in his voice on Pinkerton’s track was authentic. “I don’t know if this is disillusioning at all, but I think some of the pain you hear in my voice is actually physical. At that time, I was going through this procedure on my leg where I had all these pins and spikes and wires going through my muscle and bone. And right in the middle of that, I went and recorded the vocals for the album.”
He added: “So I just sound like I’ve been through a lot, and I think some of that is physical. And maybe if you want to have a really great vocal performance, you could consider some kind of self-torture device.” So, while there is certainly an air of emotional pain on Pinkerton, it was made all the more evident by Cuomo’s physical condition.
