The Unexpected Inspirations on Weezer’s ‘Color’ Albums
While the Teal album’s covers revealed some of the influences that make Weezer tick, there’s a wealth of less widely known sources the band has drawn from throughout their career.
Throughout Weezer’s career, their ostensibly self-titled “color” albums have stood out as sonic mile markers that help trace the alt rock heroes’ evolution. The band made a safe space for nerd rock in the grunge era with their blockbuster 1994 debut (the Blue album), streamlined their sound on 2001’s Green album, and explored new routes even to the point of swapping lead vocal chores around on their ‘08 Red album. Weezer embraced their L.A. heritage and became the alt-rock Beach Boys on 2016’s White album, revealed their inspirations on the 2019 all-covers Teal album, and pushed past their rock roots to embrace dance grooves and pure pop with production by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek on that same year’s Black album.
But while the Teal album’s covers of tunes by Black Sabbath, E.L.O, and others revealed some of the influences that make Weezer tick, there’s a wealth of less widely known sources the band has drawn from on all of their color albums. Let’s open the door on some of the under-the-radar influences that pop up throughout the Weezer color catalog, from Blue to Black.
KISS
While the fire-breathing rock god theatrics of KISS might seem like the antithesis of Weezer’s geeky-and-proud nerd rock, the hairy-chested stadium stompers were actually a key influence on bandleader Rivers Cuomo. When he first heard KISS’s Rock and Roll Over as a kid, he was so bowled over that he decided then and there that music was his calling. “I’ve pretty much based my life around that record,” he confirms in the Weezer biography River’s Edge. KISS’s “Cold Gin” is reportedly the first song he ever learned on guitar. At 14, he started his first band, Fury, which included his brother Leaves and Justin Fisher, later of Nerf Herder, and played nothing but KISS covers. And on “In the Garage” from the Blue album, Cuomo proudly declares, “I’ve got posters on the wall/My favorite rock group, Kiss/I’ve got Ace Frehley, I’ve got Peter Criss/Waiting there for me.”
Click to load video
Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”
The 19th century British fantasist Lewis Carroll is best known for the surreal vistas of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the sort of trippy tomes frequently associated with inspiring Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and other acid-baked psychedelic sojourns. Included in Through the Looking Glass, Carroll’s absurdist poem “Jabberwocky” sports such made-up words as “gimble,” “frabjous,” “frumious,” and “bandersnatch.” (It inspired the moniker for ‘60s psych rockers Frumious Bandersnatch). Decades later it made its way into the surging power-popper “L.A. Girlz” on Weezer’s White album. On the tune’s chorus, Cuomo sings, “L.A. girls, please act your age/You treat me like I have the plague/It’s the gyre and gimble in the wabe.” As you may have guessed, that last line is derived from Carroll’s kooky poetry.
Chatmonchy
Female Japanese alt-rock trio Chatmonchy made a major impact in their homeland in the 2000s and 2010s, but they’re scarcely known in the U.S. at all. Their stateside obscurity didn’t stop Cuomo from picking up on their streamlined, power pop-inflected sound, though. On the Facebook group for the Weezer Fan Club, the ever-transparent Cuomo revealed that some of the chord changes for the White album’s “Do You Wanna Get High?” were adapted from the song “Shangrila” by Chatmonchy, who he heard while touring Japan with Scott & Rivers, his duo side project with Scott Murphy of the band Allister.
The Left Banke
Listening to the chunky guitars, punchy drums, and choppy inflections of “Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori,” you might not guess that it’s got much in common with the fragile, harpsichord-inflected baroque pop of ‘60s band The Left Banke. But as indicated by Weezer’s Chatmonchy connection, around the time of their White album’s creation, Cuomo was actively stockpiling songs with compelling chord changes as grist for his creative mill. In an interview for the Song Exploder podcast, he told how the aforementioned White album track had some of The Left Banke’s transcendent 1967 ballad “Walk Away Renee” in its DNA. In fact, he said that the song’s name during its demo phase, “Awaken Early,” was a semi-anagram for the Left Banke hit.
Bow Wow
Sometimes the feeling of a song can go from one extreme to another depending on the mood of the music. “Cold Dark World” from the Red album is a perfect example. Given the track’s minor-key foreboding feel, the lyrics could be seen as coming from a stalker-ish POV. But when Cuomo has said that when he originally wrote the words, he had something earnestly sentimental in mind, along the lines of Bow Wow’s 2005 hit “Let Me Hold You,” which aired the rapper’s romantic side. When the lyrics were merged with Weezer bassist Scottt Schriner’s glowering musical setting, though, things suddenly started seeming kinda creepy in an utterly intriguing way.
ABBA
Another Red album cut, “Heart Songs” is a sweet, acoustic-based tune that stands as one of Weezer’s most unabashedly openhearted offerings. It’s basically a salute to the artists who brightened Cuomo’s youth, and a certain Swedish quartet is singled out in the song’s first verse as one of the bands that helped a young Rivers get through John Lennon’s 1980 murder. “They really are one of the all time greatest bands,” he stated. “One of the first records I bought was an ABBA record when I was 10 years old… I just remember my brother and I jumping up and down running around the room singing along to ‘SOS.’ and ‘Mama Mia.’ [sic]”
Click to load video
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It
The works of the immortal Bard of Avon have had a lasting impact on Cuomo’s lyrics. William Shakespeare pops up all over the Weezer catalog, whether on the song “Opening Night,” which references multiple Shakespeare plays and features the repeating refrain “Shakespeare Makes Me Happy” or the track “Inspired,” with the line “Till it rhymes like a Shakespeare sonnet.” But As You Like It seems to hold a special place in Cuomo’s heart. Not only does “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” from the Red album paraphrase the play’s legendary “All the world’s a stage” section, the White album’s “Thank God for Girls” features the line “I carved her name into all the trees,” seemingly straight out of As You Like It, where Orlando does the same with Rosalind’s name.
December’s Children
Speaking of “Thank God for Girls,” Shakespeare isn’t the only outside source the song draws from. Another, far more recent one is the sound of psychedelic rockers December’s Children. The trippy Ohioans’ lone, self-titled album, released in 1970, ultimately became a sought-after collector’s item but earned little renown during the band’s career. More than 40 years later, it snuck into the mainstream via “Thank God for Girls,” which features elements of that album’s opening track, “Trilogy,” and includes members of December’s Children in its songwriting credits.
The Shawshank Redemption
Cinema figures into the Weezer sphere of influences too, especially 1994’s classic The Shawshank Redemption. Two separate lines from Morgan Freeman’s Shawshank character, Red, pop up in two Black album tracks. At one point in the film, Red ironically replies to a question with “Maybe it’s because I’m Irish,” which ends up in “I’m Just Being Honest.” Elsewhere in the movie, he remarks “Boy found brains he never knew he had,” a line that’s echoed in the lyrics of “Too Many Thoughts in My Head.”
Metallica
Cuomo was a major teenage metalhead. And if you’re a metalhead in the ‘80s, you’re a Metallica head. Long after the Blue album’s hit “Undone (The Sweater Song)” came out, Cuomo eventually realized that it unintentionally mimicked chord changes from Metallica’s “Welcome Home (Sanitarium).” Weezer also covered “Enter Sandman” on the 2021 Metallica tribute album The Metallica Blacklist, where artists tackle tunes from Metallica’s 1991 Black album. And on that note, Weezer’s decision to give their own 2019 album that same unofficial title surely had at least a bit to do with Cuomo’s heavy metal heroes.
