Singles Roundup: Weezer, Taylor Swift, & The Warning

Summer is starting to heat up, but is the music scene? Let's find out.

Weezer - We Might As Well Be Strangers

The joke of Weezer color-themed albums stopped being funny when they did "Red" all those years ago, but they can't help themselves from continuing to beat the dead horse until there's nothing left but bone dust. "Gold" is coming later in the summer, and everything we know about it points to another album that will make me question whether or not I should finally snap my copy of "Pinkerton" in half. The gold cover art is hideous, there's a song that will be called "C.E.O.", which I imagine will be as awful as "Beverly Hills", and Weezer has cycled so far around the orbit of self-parody that I'm no longer sure if they're in on the joke or not.

This particular single is baffling because of the time warp it creates. In the verses, Rivers sounds as if he is singing through a de-aging AI program, turning his voice into a facsimile that sounds even more childish than his actual youth on "Blue". It's so distracting I almost lost track of what the song is doing, which turns out to maybe be a blessing. As we hit the chorus, and the duet begins, the facade of being Weezer is laid on thick. The crunch of the guitars no longer feels authentic, as nothing the band attempts does anymore, and it feels as much a 'tribute' to their own past as "Van Weezer" did to the hair metal Rivers grew up playing.

Weezer might be 'going for the gold' with this album, but I'm going to call it 'The Pyrite Album'. The joke should be obvious, or at least more obvious than the fact that Weezer is too self-aware of their own meme status to make music that means anything these days. Like I said, I often rethink what owning a copy of "Pinkerton" means for me.

Taylor Swift - I Knew It, I Knew You

It's fitting that Taylor Swift has contributed a song to "Toy Story 5", because there is a parallel in the way people talk about both of them. In each case, they were cultural phenomena that broke barriers and record, only to reach a point where people started to take pride in saying they had no exposure to the latest chapters. Once the parody of a company that said they would never make a sequel got to episode three, then four, the impact any of those movies made waned. They were raking in huge profits, but I haven't heard a single person talk about the fourth movie since it came out, and it will never have the impact the first two did.

I hear plenty of people saying the same thing about Taylor Swift, claiming they've never heard one of her songs despite her massive success, or claiming none of her songs will be remembered in fifty years like the 'real' stars of the past. That's bullshit, both because we can't predict the future, and because much of that music we remember from the past is pretty damn lousy. But it's always been cool to be anti-popular, so it's not at all unexpected.

For this song, Taylor brings some of her roots back to the forefront. The melody is still modern Taylor, but the harmonica and acoustic guitar in the back of the mix has a slight country feel, a bit like how a toy of a cowboy is perceived as western even if it was made in the far east. I've always thought this vibe fits Taylor better, as she doesn't have the killer instinct of a pop star who needs the attention merely to survive. The upward melody layered with harmonies is a beautiful turn of writing, and not a place for Taylor to show off her vocal prowess. It makes clear how much artifice is on a lot of her music, and how the backlash to her success might have been less if she didn't lean so hard into being something she has never seemed to be.

The Warning - Ritual

Here at BGM, my colleague handles most of the talk about The Warning, because they are the rare band that should be in my wheelhouse, yet he is the bigger fan. I'm not sure what exactly led to that, as I had encountered the band with their first album, which I was actually quite fond of. That faded with each record, maybe because their sound got more streamlined and mainstream. That's hard to say, but each time they come out with something new, I still listen to see if they will get back to winning me over the way their charm did at first.

The first two singles for their upcoming album didn't manage that feat. They're exactly what I would expect from The Warning, and I'm not faulting them for that. They are proving successful, so don't fix what isn't broken. This song, though, caught my ear. It is still quite modern, built on grooves of guitar notes, but the vocal melody feels more contoured and engaging. Even the call-and-response bit I would normally be cold to isn't distracting at all. Perhaps this song is the heavier and more direct version of the band I had been thinking they would be heading toward all along. I don't want to say it sound more 'mature', because I don't want to denigrate what they've been doing, but it resonates more this time.

We need more bands like The Warning, so if this is a warning shot for what else the record might hide in the deep cuts, maybe this will be the time they surprise me.