Weezer on Their New Album, Viral Success of 'Go Away' and Much More

I'm Brian Hyatt, this is Rolling Stone music now. I'm really happy to be here with Rivers Cuomo and Patrick Wilson of Weezer. They have a new album, The Gold Album, out August 21st, which I've gotten a chance to hear and really enjoy. And the first single, Shine Again, is kind of a milestone because it's written entirely by Pat. Welcome, guys, and maybe you can start by telling me a little bit about how that song came together. I guess we're in a new spirit of openness and collaboration in the band. It's kind of how we rehearsed for the whole thing. We were in Dan Pollo, which is essentially living room in Orange County. And we were all just together, hashing out the songs, watching them evolve. And I had a couple songs, and this was one of them. And it's been thrilled that it worked out. And then it even went to the next level once we started working with Kenny and Klaus, and it was fantastic. Yeah, it's one of those rare songs that from the first time we played it, and every time since then, it was just effortless and fun. And yeah, we have this feeling of confidence that grows as the song progresses. And it's kind of how the record feels too. None of it was grindy. It all was easy to let happen. When you're writing for Weezer and for Rivers to sing, Pat, I mean, are you in some sense channeling him? Are you thinking about the way that other Weezer songs have been? No. I think of nothing. I didn't even think it was a Weezer song. I just, one day, I was like, oh, it all just poured out, and I recorded it. And I on a whim, I just brought it in. It takes me, many takes to really own it as a singer. And I make little tweaks. I raised the verse up in octave, because I couldn't sing as low as Patrick was singing. Yeah, I was like, I was like, the call, it was like, I was trying to be, I was trying to sing like, of course, I'm going to Ian McCullough, because I love them. Yeah, I think it's cool. If I'm presented with an idea that's outside of something I would normally sing, and then I have to figure out how to, how I would sing it, it takes me to some places that I wouldn't come up with on my own. I guess in a way for you, Rivers, it's like doing a cover song, which you have a lot of experience doing. Yes. At the same time, though, so often when I do covers, I take the opposite approach where I just try to copy exactly what the original singer did, because I'm curious to learn how the great singers would interpret something. So I know Tee-Lob was criticized for that for copying the original vocal too closely, but I can't help it. It's just, I'm a curious student. That's why I do that. It still sounds like you, though. I don't feel like you're copying those people. You just sang it. You were true to how they arranged it, you know? Still sounds like you. It's as close as exactly as I try to sing Michael Jackson, it's probably going to not sound like Michael Jackson at the end of the day. What is the deal with all those cover songs that you dropped on YouTube? Some people was one is recently. Some people went as far as they think it was some kind of accident, which I kind of doubt. Yeah. We have a rare few months off, so I've just been doing clean up archiving projects and was just going through old Dropbox folders and I saw all these old covers there and I couldn't put them on Weasify, which is this app I have for sharing my songs demos, I wrote. These are cover songs, so I don't have the rights to release them that way. And then it occurred to me, "Oh, I just put them on YouTube." So I just put them on YouTube and they were up there for a couple days and I wasn't getting any comments at all. And then I realized I made the playlist public, but I didn't make any of the tracks public. I didn't realize you had to do that. So I went back and I made everything public and then I wrote a note trying to explain why I had shared this empty playlist with everyone. But the way I word it, worded it, made it sound like I had made some kind of mistake in sharing all this stuff in the first place. So I think it turned into a bigger story than it actually is. But one of, again, the big story here is this album, the Gold Album and very interesting pairing of producers, Kenneth Blum, and at least class Oland is how I believe as the Craigweider Prohanced and tell me about putting those two together and just how that came about. I, I originally reached out to close, I call them close. And right after seasons wrapped up, say the very beginning of 2023, because I was such a huge fan of ghost, the ghost record seed made. And yeah, all my favorite ghost records were produced by Klaus. So I thought, man, be cool to do a record like that. And then we worked together for a long time. And at the last second, right as we went into the studio, he had recently made a record with Kenny called, it's a hardcore band with a banjo player. So there's probably one of the banjo player. Show me the body. Yes. Thank you. Yes. And so Klaus is playing it for us. And he said, I have this feeling that if we involved this other producer that I just made this record with, we could work as a team like we did on Show Me the Body. When we come from such different places, you're going to end up with something that has the high attention to detail and songwriting craft that I Klaus bring. But it's also going to have that brutal raw energy that Kenny brings. So it's, we gave it a shot. We went down to it and we all checked out Kenny's studio. It was really cool. And from the moment we pressed record, it was, it was just very alive sessions. How familiar were you with, I think when people saw Kenny's name associated with yours, a lot of people was first assumption was, oh, you guys heard getting killed by Geese and picked my clear that that wasn't the case. But did you end up spending some time with that record? Yeah. Coincidentally, Jake Sinclair, who's produced several of our albums, came over to my house like a few, just a few weeks before I heard about Kenny and said, yeah, you should check out Geese. And he played me some things and he was telling me what was so cool about how they record some of their production techniques. And so I was prepared when I got to Kenny's and learned that he was the guy who was doing all of that with them. So I didn't look like a complete ignoramus. And Patrick, I know that your big fan as many drummers would be of sort of playing in a more live way. And I think for me, one of the best drum sounds in the Weaser catalog was on Pinkerton, which was sort of a very live sound. And I feel like this album, and I've seen some of the fans talking about the single, I feel like this is one of your coolest drum sounds since then. And it does have a very live feel. So I've been feeling that this really, this process really jived with your way of thinking. Yeah, for sure, I get frustrated a lot when the instrumentation becomes like almost like a necessary evil to serve the song. You know what I mean? So much music now is just programmed and so compressed. And I instantly don't care when I hear it. So of course being a Gen X dude, I grew up on all, you couldn't do it that way back then. So you had to sort of have the live energy in the room and that's what we wound up getting. And I mean, I'm thrilled that there's no grid. There's no click track. But I'm also sensitive to like something being sloppy. And not once do I feel that it's unsteady. We get a certain kind of tightness when you're not playing along to a click track, not to compare myself to Clyde Stubblefield who's an obvious genius. But James Brown recordings are tight in a way that quantized music is not tight. But it's it breathes and moves, but it's just so together. It's like being pulled along by a thread. It's hard to describe, but it's very musical. And that's what we're trying to do. And Rivers, how did you feel about that aspect of the process? Did you have any qualms about it? Well, I felt like I had this super strong instinct that I wanted to I wanted Pat to take a turn at the wheel basically. As far as just like the overall aesthetic of the album. And so yeah, I guess I come from a more grid-like background. I guess I grew up on Metallica records where everything is super precise and more machine-like. But I just had this feeling like man, I think if we really get if we make a record that Patrick is super excited about and really identifies with and like that's the kind of record he would actually listen to. That could be a real sweet spot for weezer and I just kept checking in with him every move we made like how does this feels are we moving in the right direction here and it's his idea to have us all rehearse together quite a bit and played the game. The songs and not spend so much time with having like me and Klaus demoing and orchestrating and arranging but let's just get in a room together and play and see what happens and less talk more rock just let the flow happen. Yeah, it was cool like I would look over at you in the living room and you were very open to emerging ideas in the room and you you almost seemed to use it as a fuel even like sometimes with like the lyrical ideas or like a way to think about something. It was the opposite of oh, here's this great song and this is how it goes and it's essentially done. So I guess it is kind of like Pinkerton in that way but more focused. I remember you saying a long time ago that you kind of wish that the blue album was a little bit more like Pinkerton but Pinkerton would be a little bit more like the blue album. I guess maybe that's where this is to me because what's great about the blue album is there's no fat on any of it and that that there is on on Pinkerton but Pinkerton is so bombastic and just explosive and the blue album is so focused that I don't know I really feel like this is the best happy medium of both of those. I know that Kenny was talking about sort of Desert Rock type guitar sounds just as a reference which I hear in the finished music tell me about him introducing that idea and just and what it took to get there. I would let you take that one. I just came in one day and it was instant sludge and they were like out of the guitar sound and I love Desert Rock and I love Fumantue and all that. So I was like, okay, sweet. This is going to be like that's a weighty guitar sound. Let's go. Yeah, I feel like it's actually I don't think Kenny knew this but it's actually quite a bit like what our guitar sounded like before we made the blue album before we started working with Rico Cacic. Would you agree Patrick? 100% I'm just smiling thinking about it now like you were we were super into like the blown out neck pickup into a boogie sound is just so sludgy. Because I think at that time we were still listening to a lot of like sub pop Nirvana and like that kind of music and when Rick was like no, no, you got to you got to put it on the rhythm or the neck pick or the bridge pickup and you know we're going to play through this amp. It it changed the sound but it was still thick and punchy so I think we were fine with it. Yeah, so it felt like coming home to you to switch back to the neck pickup and turn up the sludge and I think he ended up using for the entire record he used an amplifier Gibson amplifier from like the mid 40s. Yeah, it's crazy to me. It's a I think it's called like a GA I don't know GA 40 or something but yeah, it's it's those amps sound awesome don't tell anybody. It's just this tiny little thing it's it looks like something you'd buy in a series catalog back in the mid 20th century but. If you turn it up all the way it sounds brutal. I and I like why didn't why didn't anyone do that back then like you hear guitars recording some back then they're so tame. With like Clapton and all those people in the mid 60s they just started turning it up and they're like oh that sounds good. Jimmy Page in the studio and all that they got into it and they realized oh this is a beautiful sound. Did no one try it in like 1945 and then like how did they oh that doesn't sound good better turn it back down. Well, I mean real solid body electric guitars didn't really get on the scene until the very early 50s so like. If you turned that shit up before then feedback I think it would feedback grow bad with all bodies and like the. Essentially they had a microphone on the strings like the pickups were more feedbacky. So this sort of weasier glassnost that openness that Patrick referred to I mean there's been periods of you know, I mean really it's been an ongoing thing there's been a lot of. Opening up the process in various ways over the years a lot of band member contributions on this album a lot of different combinations including the two of you writing together which hasn't happened a million times in history the band is fairly rare just the two of you so tell me about that. What are your thinking is that about that rivers so last year. The four of us in weaser. We're involved. In a film project it was basically like this comedy improv project and over the course of a month or two and I have never had so much fun as I did working with these guys during that time. We were not in our preferred medium of music making we're improv acting and joking around. But it was so funny and so fun and at the end of that process I was like wow if only record making could be that much fun and feel so collaborative and like we're playing off of each other's. Energy and making stuff up together in the moment and so I wanted to head into the making of this record. With the goal of having that much fun with these guys. Yeah like a lot of it was we would have to be ourselves but come up with. What we would say in in in in that and I guess that was how we approach this album as well so was some of it I think. Reading between lines of what can he said I guess on rivers discord it sounds like some of the stuff was almost written on the studio floor. Maybe I but I at least that's sort of what I took was at the case some of it yeah I mean we did spend a long time writing songs in advance and then a long time rehearsing down in Orange County. And then again in the studio we're still tweaking songs putting different parts together into a new song and you know sitting around in the control room. Pouring over the lyrics trying to push every line to be as good as it can be yeah it's true you what happens is you get accustomed to an environment and then you optimize for that. And then you switch environments and then you sort of optimize for that and then you get to the final place and you go oh these are the conditions here now and then you wind up changing again. But throughout that whole process you get more and more familiar with the vibe of each song and it's okay if you make big changes because ultimately it has to be what is resonating when you're recording it and whether if not on the studio for where there's with their songs that sort of came together. In a group fashion in rehearsal yeah people would have ideas and be like oh. I hear this here or I hear that there or hey maybe wait a second before you start this you know just those kinds of. Tweaks would pop up a lot yeah or like don't make it weird had a totally different. Verse and yeah it was I mean the song was okay people are like yeah that's a good chorus. We played it for weeks I think and then finally one day Patrick was like I've got this totally other song that has a cool. Verse part and we replace my verse with his person suddenly it's one of our favorite songs on the record it did just totally change the energy of the song. It started as a river song solely and then by pulling in part of the Patrick song it became a collaboration is that correct it's cool yeah so a mashup of two to. Different songs there's also like this happened a lot and it drove it was it was exhausting but it was for the best when. We'd be playing a song and think it's done for months and then Brian would come in and say I got another part for this song wait a year this is like again I thought we were across the finish line. But then sure enough you give it an honest try and within a few days you're like you know what the songs better now that we have this bridge from Brian. Also for don't make it weird that I really feel like clouds is the key because one day he just put it together he had heard my riff and I was that was stoked I was like oh wow that's serendipitous. The other song that you guys are credited as a duo is hoops which is very it's relatable as it gets say but how did was that an actual sit down collaboration or was it a similar kind of weird. Yeah we would oh my god I it's one of the I wrote the song and I thought it was done but these guys just throughout the whole making the record they kept raising their hands when lyrics bothered them. So I would. I. I kept asking for help. And yeah, so there were a number of times Patrick and I, and even Carl, we'd all get together, we're on tour or something, we meet in the lobby or we'd just go over the lyrics and we had a lot of funny versions. - Oh my God, we had the best version. But what song was it where we had to be? - It was a song about the Doobie Brothers or something. - Yeah, it was where Michael McDonald was like, they were talking about their mustache issues or something, it was hilarious. One had a beard, one had a stash. - Yeah, yeah, and Michael and I was like, no, you gotta have a beard, dude. You can't just have a mustache. - I was so happy when we were dying laugh and thinking about it. - And one time it was about The Oasis Brothers and we had so much fun just doing all these different versions. - I think the round table is the term I would use to describe a lot of how we're operating at this point where we will literally sit around a round table and just throw shit around, whether it's deciding to do something or lyrics or any of that, I really look forward to those meetings. - So who's responsible for Calvin Broadess warned us all about hose? All she ever wanted to do was to paint her tummy. (laughing) - He's gonna see that, which makes me giggle. Like, come on, man. (laughing) - It's pretty funny. And Patrick, you also wrote "No Where," right? Which is a really lovely song. - Oh, thank you. Well, Rivers arranged it so that it made sense and also improved the lyrics a ton. It was pretty different, but some of the key parts, like the way the chords work and everything were pretty good. - And I think one of the most group efforts is the song, "The Show Must Go On," which has a lot of self-referential lyrics. - Well, we couldn't understand the riff, by the way. It's like, (indistinct) and I was like, I heard one in like a completely different place for months and I would just come in where they told me to and I'd be like, wow, that's, which is ironic because it's basically what is it rock and roll by Led Zeppelin? - I couldn't hear it. - It has an interesting set of credits, which include the two of you and Brian and Carl, your long time, website guy. - It was a group effort. - Yeah. - It was a, we really liked the song, but there was just so much wrong with it in the all the earlier versions and it just took all of us to get it over the finish line. I think, yeah, I remember Patrick E. Brott, we were up on the roof of Kenny's studio and you were talking about my mama said and comb your hair and all of that. I thought that was definitely up the fun factor. - Yeah. - There's always, you know, there's always parts of the past, haunting you. In this case, there is a very recent thing, relatively speaking, of course, your career. ♪ Go away, go away, go away, go away ♪ ♪ Go away, go away ♪ - The song "Go Away" in that way of things now, decided to become a hit of years later. - It's literally blowing up like as we speak, it's insane. - Yeah, what is that as it is a thing that happens now? Like a song, it's a great song, but you have a lot of great songs and it's, it picked that song with Bethany picked itself to blow up. What is it like to experience that and how do you, how do you make sense of that? - It's wild. It's like the song found its time. - Yeah, I mean, I'm so happy about it and it just gives me so much hope for the future because if it can happen with "Go Away," it could happen to any of our songs and maybe five years from now, there'll be some new platform that uses music in a different way and people will go back through a catalog and find something else and I'm just happy when people hear our music. - A similar magic feels like it's there in the track. We might as well be strangers featuring Carly from Wednesday. It's another sort of male female duet and another great song. ♪ To where we lost you ♪ ♪ We might as well be strangers ♪ ♪ For a hug ♪ ♪ Something came along and changed ♪ - Tell me about the evolution of that and bringing Carly on and whose idea that was and et cetera. - The very first day I went to Kenny's studio, he was playing me Wednesday and saying, "You guys should listen to this and be influenced by this. "They're a younger band. "They're really hot right now, "but they have some roots back in Weezer World." So I was listening to that and over the course of making the album and then, yeah, I think it part because it go away. I was just thinking like, "You're great to have another male female duet "on this record. "Strangeers seems like a good song for it." And maybe that Wednesday girl could be good for this. So yeah, Kenny obviously knows him really well and brought it up to her. She was into the idea and came down and saying her ideas for us. It's really cool 'cause yes, it's another female duet, but we're not really singing to each other about each other. We're kind of singing side by side about other people. I don't know if that's how people here have a tated. - Yeah. And Carly has a writing credit. Did she, I guess she ended up tweaking it a little bit once she came in? - Oh no, she wrote her whole verse. - Oh wow. - Yeah. - And did she do it like in front of you or you sent her half a song or how did that kind of go down? - We sent her to the song, but with like no vocals in the second verse. So when she came in and met me, she sat right down and said, "Okay, here's my idea." And she just pulled out, what is it like some text file on her phone? And then can you play the track? And she's saying it to me and it's just blown away. - It's a special song, I think. I don't want to jinx it, but to me, it cuts in a different way than a lot of them album. I think it's cool. - 2032 single. - That's right. - I'll at least that now and it'll come around. That's right. Was the process with Bethany similar? Where did she fill in her own parts or how did that one work with Go away? - No, that was a little more traditional where she came to the studio in 2010. It's just me and her. And we didn't have, I think I just had like a chord progression. And we wrote the whole thing over that together side by side. - Wow. So I think one of the moments that really stood out to me is the song CEO, which is a solo ribbers composition, cranking out another 90s jam, wish I could do something new, but nobody wants to hear that. They just want the classics. You can't blame them really. There's something special about your early shed. Tell me about putting that onto a song and how the extent of tongue and cheekness to sincerity, the ratio of tongue and cheek to sincerity with all that. - I'll just take this first. - Yeah. It's not something that works in the Newtonian universe. It's a quantum entanglement, you understand? It's neither here nor there, but always everywhere. So don't worry about it. - I don't know. I mean, this question has come up in the past about different songs. How tongue and cheek are you in Beverly Hills, for example, or when you say, "What's with these homies, "disadmiring all?" I don't know. I don't think I'm being tongue and cheek at all. I think if you were to read my mind at that time, those were the exact thoughts that would be going through it. - I should have known better than, I should have known, given your past comments, that would be the case, yeah. And when you say, "Here comes the CEO," is that like the CEO of the record label, or are you thinking of yourself as the CEO of Weezer Incorporated, or both, or answer C? - Well, I mean, I think you've identified the real problem lyric of the song, and that wasn't the original lyric. It was originally, "I'm the CEO," and I was bemoaning the fact that I'm finding myself in this role that doesn't really work with being an artist, but I think nobody, everyone loved the song, but nobody liked that line. And just we tried everything we could to replace it. And we finally settled on kind of a, not bad. - No, what did you have? - My idea was to name it C3PO. - Oh yeah, 'cause I'm C3PO. I really liked that one. (laughing) So we ended up externalizing it, which is fair, that's fair to do as an artist. Like, "Here comes the CEO." It's like, "Externalize this part of myself that's bringing down the party." - The opening track, say yes, was that, did that come from the Yoko Ono-Jang Lennon moment that you referenced briefly in the song was that the original sort of impetus for the idea? - I wouldn't say that was the original impetus, but that I did start thinking about that moment as I was writing the song, yeah. - And it does, again, seem to reflect, that it hits some sort of big, it hits some sort of big life philosophy issues. Tell me about that. you're overall thinking about, you know, the lyrics that led to lyrics of that song. I only get one weird life I get to live. I only get to, I only get one chance to show you who I am. I mean, you know, that's big stuff and it's, you know, I enjoy hearing it. Yeah, I mean, honestly, all these lyrics are such a journey to end up where we end up. And originally it was, it was called "school sucks" and I was writing to my middle school son and telling him, "I get it." "One work sucks, teacher sucks." All this really sucks. Don't worry about it. And a lot of it was usable still in the verses like what you just quoted, but nobody wanted me to hear to hear me sing "school sucks." So we changed it to say yes. So yeah, most of the song is me singing to my son. Oh wow, wow. The, yeah, the frightened new guest letting you to, you don't know how to act. I'm telling you Jack hit the road. Yeah, it's, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah, we put so much pressure on kids and try to scare them into doing this dull stuff. In September, it is the 30th anniversary of Pinkerton. Any plans for any direct celebration playing it on the tour, emphasizing it, anything like that. Any thoughts on if all you want to commemorate this or if you're putting out this album to impart to drown out that anniversary. I haven't heard any special plans. No, me neither. And I think we're all just so jazzed about the new record that, which I guess on ironically is a similar energy to Pinkerton, but we're not really looking to leverage that anniversary. I don't think. Why is 30 such a thing? You would think 20 and 25, but no, it's always, I don't know why 30 is like a thing. It has some, yeah, it's some mystical resonance. I couldn't tell you, but yesterday is a thing. Because you're 45, when, because you bought it when you were 15. I think that's right. Riversha, just my last Pinkerton question is just that you're thinking has always gone through an evolution. Are you in any kind of new place and you're thinking about that album or if you could do land on it's good and stay there? Oh, yeah, I don't remember what you heard last, but I do think it's good. That's right. Well, that is, that's the last, the last thing is that you've come to appreciate its honesty and fearlessness and all that after initially, you know, some periods of being quite down on it. Well, he thought it was amazing. We all thought it was amazing. And then people got mad because it wasn't the lick in Buddy Holly. And then, then that was like, you know, getting stomped on in the marketplace like that doesn't feel good for a young artist. So of course, of course, we're going to feel a certain way about it. But, you know, it is, it's, it is what it is. It's powerful. I hope Rolling Stone isn't giving me a hard time for not like Pink, like in Pinkerton or not. Exactly. We've completely reconstituted ourselves. So there's no, the sins of the father. Yeah. That's all right. I mean, like the guys from Queen are still, are it still skittish about when I talked to the guys from Queen and after reminding them that I was barely born when some of these things happened. And even so, it's still like, you know, sins of the father. Yes, exactly. But, you know, in general, it's been such a prolific last few years. And it feels like, it feels like you're in even more positive place right now. It feels like you're feeling pretty good about the about the future and the present of the band. Yeah. For sure. I've been taking a look at just from my perspective lately has been like, what other band from our origin era is hitting creative strides like we are. I'm like, wow, this is odd. But I love it. And it feels like she has been unblocked. Yeah. I'd say I just, I really love spending time with these guys and hooping around. And I was really appreciate having them in my life. I guess when you're younger, you just take it for granted. But I just really value them on the tour front. Josh frees was back on drums. If fans, they kind of do like you on drums. There's always a bit of fan grumbling when that happens. What's the thinking there and will continue when last year? It's kind of a long story, but I was just burned. And physically or mentally or bone. It's just the whole thing. Like I was not in a great place. And a lot of it was physical, which of course makes you emotionally feel lame as well. But we were fortunate that he could step in because he's been in our orbit for a long time. But I won't lie. I love playing guitar. Yeah. It's a real conundrum because Patrick is the most unbelievable guitar player and so creative. And it's a shame that we can't make, we haven't figured out how to make more use of them because he's also such a huge part of the DNA of the band as the drummer. And this is something we're actively talking about and working on and experimenting with. So do you think Josh will be back on the next tour? I mean, there's so far there's no plans. But I do love playing with him. I always point back to the the paranoid Android video with him on drums and me on guitar. And I look at that energy and I'm like, wow, we are just on fire. Like the band is raging. And I guess it's not the same as me playing drums. But it can be awesome in a different way. I think so. I think so. What did it take for you to get unburned out, Patrick? I'm still going through that right now. It's funny. You say, it's for me, I had to go to a lot of physical therapy. I'm 57 and I have what every drummer has to go through like your thoracic region from years of bad postures, you know, happening. And I'm just trying to get straightened out so that we get through the tour and we'll be, you know, the classic version. And to go back to the CO lyrics, how do you deal with, I mean, if we're up to you, would this set list be much heavier on new material? Do you use this? Album is an example of so much great stuff in this album. And yet there's a lot of set list real estate that has to be taken up often with the songs that the, you know, the war horses that people want to hear. How do you kind of deal with those two facts? Well, same as everything else. We just keep talking about it. And I think we're all planning to play a lot of these new songs. So I, we'll see if we can keep that up as the tour goes on. But I, yeah, I think maybe four or even five of the songs from the 10 song new album, I think we'd all be super excited for that. I think some people deal with this by making this show super long, which I don't know, so it never quite been your strategy to put to do like the three hour shows. No. No, I mean, like, I'm pushing to have the, the set start at 730. Because you look, when it's 10 o'clock, like, we're going to phase two, we need to get on the internet, we need to be in bed. Maybe we'll watch a show, you know, life has changed. Finally, I guess if there's, if there's one song from your vast catalog that could have the same viral belated success as your song with Bethany, do you have one pick? Each of you a deep cut that you'd love to be blown up. Shine again. I think that one would be great. Fair enough, imagine the current single. Why not the current single going viral TikTok? Yes. I think it'd be cool if of Pinkerton's song became a big hit. It would be poetic, wouldn't it? I think it would just bring together the two worlds, like the hardcore fans who are so passionate about the album and the casual fans who've never heard it, they would come together and we could make more use of that album. Come together in some sort of gathering. Fair enough. Patrick and Rivers of Weezer, thank you so much for joining me. Always great to speak with you. Yes, this was nice. And that was today's episode. Thanks so much for listening. Download all of Rolling Stones podcasts on the Rolling Stone All Access feed, or look out for Rolling Stone Music now on its own feed, all wherever you get your podcasts. And look for more of my coverage of Weezer's new album on RollingStone.com.