Can I "Make Believe" Weezer Broke Up Twenty Years Ago?

Fame is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Weezer are a prime example of this, as they have been in the public eye for thirty years, and have been cringe-inducing and/or outright terrible for twenty of them. And yet, Weezer still sells tickets and carries on with a career modern bands will struggle to ever match. Once "Buddy Holly" became as big as it was, Weezer was guaranteed to have a career. All one-hit wonders do, to a degree. When "Hash Pipe" became their second unavoidable song, they were set for life. They could do nearly anything and walk away with enough goodwill to keep their audience.

They tried to throw it away with an album of angry incel energy referencing opera. They tried again with an album of impersonal songs written according to formula. They tried again with an album of half-written faux-metal saved by an appearance from The Muppets in a video.

As album number five came around, Weezer was looking for new ways to fail to tank their career. For this occasion, Rivers Cuomo didn't seem to have an idea for which bad idea to jump on first. What happened was multiple sets of demos coming out that showed what the album could have been, all of which were scrapped again and again for what became the finished product. Those demos are an entire story unto themselves, but for now let's say Rivers came across unfocused. There were gems in those demos, and there were experiments that simply didn't work at all.

Despite that, every second of even the worst of those demos is better than how we were introduced to "Make Believe". That would be the song "Beverly Hills", which was the true turning point where Weezer went from being a band using gimmicks to get attention to a band that had nothing left to offer. Rivers' lyrics had already been vapid for a couple of albums, but now they were unbearable in their pursuit of fame. The almost rapping cadence made him sound even more ridiculous than when he was singing about Buddy Holly and sweaters. The ultra-generic riff repeated again and again was the icing on the cake, showing a complete disinterest in developing the idea into an actual song worth listening to.

Somehow, "Beverly Hills" became their next (and last, thankfully) enduring hit. I don't understand how or why, but that song still gets airplay even now. It single-handedly ruined the reputation of "Make Believe", which has long competed for the title of Weezer's worst album. I don't think that it possibly can be, given how much further down they would sink, but I understand the loathing of "Beverly Hills" making the rest of the album impossible to hear properly.

I will never try to tell you "Make Believe" is a great record, but there are worthy songs that got shackled to a period when people were angry with Rivers. "Perfect Situation" is a rare song that is able to be successful even without a chorus. "This Is Such A Pity" was an 80s homage that didn't feel cloying and pathetic. "Haunt You Every Day" was an even stronger version of how "Only In Dreams" closed out their debut record. There are good moments to be found here, truly.

"Beverly Hills" ruins things, but it isn't alone. The other skeleton we have to pull out of the closet is "Freak Me Out", which would be a good song if not for the fact that it's written about being afraid of a spider. I hate even typing that sentence.

What's interesting about Weezer isn't the debate over whether or not they fell off the proverbial cliff, it's that we can't agree on when they did so. Pretty much everyone agrees the band has pissed away their legacy as important musicians, but we all have a different take on when that happened. Maybe it was when "Pinkerton" failed miserably. Maybe it was when "Green" stripped away all of River's personality. Maybe it was when Rivers grew a mustache and play-acted as a cowboy. Maybe it was when they put the actor from "Lost" on their album cover.

The point is; Weezer has given us ample opportunity to hate their guts, and yet they never seem to go away. That says more about us than it does them. We're the ones who keep forgiving their sins, the ones who keep giving them yet another chance to disappoint us.

Weezer is destined to hurt us, but in the grand scheme of things "Make Believe" is not their greatest sin. It was a warning, a test of how masochistic we were willing to be. I'm drawing the line here. Now let's hope I don't have any reason to talk about them again until I have to write about the thirtieth anniversary of "Pinkerton" next year. That's going to be a doozy.