Pinkerton

Pinkerton is Weezer’s second studio album, named after B.F. Pinkerton of the opera “Madama Butterfly.” The album had a harsher sound than their original Blue Album, and in order to achieve this sound, Weezer chose not to have a producer work with them. This new sound, however, created a cult-like status and became a part of the “emo culture.” This is in part due to the fact that the songs were written during a dark time in frontman Rivers Cuomo’s life, and were meant to have a “more visceral and exposed” sound. A 1996 interview reveals that the songs are in fact chronological with two minor exceptions.

From the same interview, on the recording process:

I decided not to make any demos and instead just to write the basic melodies and chord changes without orchestrating everyone’s parts at all. So we went into the studio without really knowing what was going to happen. And it gave everyone a lot more room to be creative and spontaneous on their instruments.

Originally, Pinkerton was intended to be a much different album. The original project was titled Songs From the Black Hole, and was intended to be a space-themed rock opera. However, after much composing and recording, the project was scrapped. The remains became what is now Pinkerton.

As for critical reception, the album did quite well, though not as well as their first. Rolling Stone readers even voted it as the third worst album of 1996. Pinkerton peaked at #19 on the U.S. Billboard charts, and is also #53 on Spin’s “Top 100 Albums of the 1990’s” list.

In later years, Pinkerton garnered enduring sales, critical acclaim and cult status through the internet. Today, many Weezer fans consider the album as the band’s best. Many retrospective reviews for Pinkerton give the album a perfect (or an almost perfect) score.

Rivers Cuomo also had a difficult relationship with the album after its release, specially because of the harsh reaction of critics and fans. In 2001, he told Entertainment Weekly:

It’s a hideous record… It was such a hugely painful mistake that happened in front of hundreds of thousands of people and continues to happen on a grander and grander scale and just won’t go away. It’s like 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.

Even with the initial disappointment, Pinkerton had a big influence in the first mainstream Emo groups, like Saves the Day and Jimmy Eat World. In 2008, Rivers Cuomo reconsidered the album, saying:

Pinkerton’s great. It’s super-deep, brave, and authentic. Listening to it, I can tell that I was really going for it when I wrote and recorded a lot of those songs.

Since 2008, Weezer has played Pinkerton’s songs many times in live performances, even playing the whole album front to back in some tours, like Memories, from 2010.