Spurred on by the lead single from Raditude, Weezer embarked on a “Memories” tour around this time where they would play the blue Weezer album and Pinkerton on alternating nights. Rivers had stopped shtting on (or at least dismissing) their sophomore record. They had also finished their major label contract, so Weezer were now free to sign with a more respectable indie. The timing was right for the band to make a comeback. Something to win back all those fans and critics they had lost while chasing pop superstardom.

Everything about the next record was designed for that sole purpose, and it worked. Of course, I think 90% of that all boiled down to the lead-off single, Back To The Shack. Never had a song so directly and nakedly pleaded with an audience for forgiveness. He directly sings about how he should play the lead guitar and Pat should play the drums. It was not subtle at all. And so critics hailed Everything Will Be Alright In The End as a major return to form. They even brought in Ric Ocasek to produce again. Sure, the album title was longer than all of the previous album titles combined. And instead of ending with a tight ten-song set, there was a multi-part near-instrumental suite tacked on at the end. But this came across as ambitious instead of gimmicky, and everyone was glad to have Weezer back in favor again.

But digging deeper, this album isn’t nearly as great as it seemed at the time. Rivers was still co-writing half of the songs. Sure, Back To The Shack was personal, in that it could only be about someone who’s band was in decline — but also played a Strat with a lightning strap. But it wasn’t very deep, or intimate. And it’s not like the rest of the album is any more revealing. There’s a song on here called The British Are Coming and maybe if you squint you can see the lyrics as a metaphor, but it really seems like this is just a song about the Revolutionary War. If you look at the song, Elegy For A Rock Band, it’s all the more confusing. It’s a song about a rock band that is past its prime, and even though they used to be good, they should hang it up and stop embarrassing themselves. Is Rivers talking about himself (and Weezer) and if he is, then why are they making this album? And he’s not, aren’t the parallels a little too close to the bone? It seems like it didn’t even cross his mind, which makes it that much more confusing. Before the three-part mini-prog rock opera, there is a tune called Foolish Father that addresses some of the themes of his relationship with his actual dad and seeking forgiveness now that Rivers is a father himself, but even that feels to couched in safe and distant language to really have any impact.

Still the album did what it set out to do, so Weezer continued on this trajectory with their white Weezer album. The album was allegedly written around the theme of summer, and was produced by Jake Sinclair. And even though it shares a lot of the same problems the last album shared with Hurley and Raditude, people really liked this album, frequently calling it their best album since Pinkerton. I don’t get it. The flirtations with hip-hop are still in place as well as Rivers continuing to write about “girls”. For a band as straight-edge as Weezer is, the single Do You Wanna Get High? was an odd choice. Then again, so was Dope Nose or Hash Pipe or any number of other songs that once again found Rivers writing about stuff he really knows nothing about. Most people however, found this album to be Weezer sounding like old, classic Weezer and they loved it.

But not Rivers.

He apparently felt very constrained by Jake Sinclair who was trying to get them to stick to the tried-and-true Weezer formula. Rivers wanted to do something new and different and experimental. While it was talked about having a “black” album follow-up the white Weezer album, something that was darker than the fun-in-the-sun beach songs – instead what Rivers did next was another record full of samples and synths and other stabs at pop stardom entitled Pacific Daydream. It was executive produced by Butch Walker, and once again the Weezer faithful had raised the pitchforks and torches, upset that when Rivers went back to the shack, he didn’t just stay there. While this album did have Rivers writing about a Weekend Woman instead of a girl, it just didn’t work. Songs about hating the daily grind of your boring office job and pining for a Happy Hour rang false and a little patronizing.

Rivers also appeared on the Song Exploder podcast, explaining how he wrote the song Summer Elaine And Drunk Dori using a series of spreadsheets and algorithims. It explained to a lot of people why Weezer’s current work felt not only inauthentic, but generally unaware of how human beings felt and operating. No one writes song like that. The temporary comeback of Everything Will Be Alright In The End and the white Weezer album came to a crashing halt, and Weezer had fallen back to where they were in the Raditude/Hurley days.

But soon Weezer wouldn’t need those old fans at all any more. There were about to have their biggest hit ever, from the most unlikely of sources.