In what may be the 21st Century equivalent of yelling out “Freebird!”, a 14-year-old girl started a twitter campaign to convince Weezer to cover Africa by Toto. While they trolled her at first by covering Rosanna instead, they eventually capitulated. It was a competent and faithful rendition, with nothing particularly Weezer-y about it. And because we are currently living in the darkest of timelines, this cover became Weezer’s biggest hit since the 1900s.

Despite still promising to be working on a “black” album, the band quickly sprang an entire covers record with no advance warning on the world once they realized what a hit the Africa cover had been. Given the Miami Vice threads that Rivers was sporting on the teal cover, one would assume this was an album entirely of cheezy 80s covers. And most of it was, but that wasn’t quite the theme here. In fact, no one was sure what the theme was. Sure A-Ha, the Eurhythmics and Tears For Fears fit with the Toto demographic; but there were also a pair of sixties covers (Happy Together and Stand By Me) that felt like rejected tunes from a Pixar film. There was also the cover of TLC’s No Scrubs that clearly was not something that the band were listening to as kids. Was it supposed to be funny? If so, what is the joke? Just that a guy is singing it? There was no twist to any of these songs. They were all done very respectfully and it didn’t feel like the band added anything to them at all. Nothing about them made them seem like songs Weezer particularly loved or wanted to play. Especially considering the way they were cyber-cullied into Africa in the first place. Weezer had already done two tracks (Heartsongs and In The Garage) where they laid their influences bare – and none of the songs on here really felt of that vein. In fact, the only track on here that felt like something Rivers would’ve like as a kid was a cover of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. And that was the one song not sung by Rivers, but rather guitarist Brian Bell.

It just felt cold and calculated and impersonal. Worst of all it was as commercial as intended, and despite some confused critical reviews the teal Weezer album did quite well. Still fans were holding out hope for that long-promised “black” album that would surely be as dark and as scary as the color scheme predicted.

So when the first single dropped, a song where Rivers promised to start cussing for the first time, it was a shock. Can’t Knock The Hustle feature a bit of a sampled Mariachi hook in another hip-hop influenced track. Once again Rivers was co-opting youth culture and using slang that felt disingenuous and almost pathetic coming from a middle-aged man’s mouth. The rest of the black Weezer album was more of the same.

But promising something different with an album sort of became par-for-the-course for Rivers and Weezer. After the black Weezer album, two projects were announced that the band would be working on simultaneously. One, entitled OK Human, would be a string-laden, piano-based album of ballads all Harry Nilsson. The other would be a hair metal inspired trip back to Rivers’s youth called Van Weezer. Guess which one the recorded company wanted to release first? The metal one, of course.

The first single, The End Of The Game, got released back in September of 2019, even though the album wasn’t due until May of this year. However, when the second single, Hero, dropped that month, it was also revealed that the album’s release would be delayed due to the pandemic. Which really screwed up my plans to include more of those songs in this playlist. So instead I added a couple of covers that don’t really fall in line chronologically, but fit in with the teal Weezer album.

It’s disappointing – but so is Weezer.