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 ==Recording process==
-{{Quote|They'd record a song nine times and it would be completely different each time. And then they'd have me edit them together...They would sit down with a list and show me all these edit points they wanted to make. And I would edit the tape together into one complete take, and then they'd decide whether they liked that or not. And if not, then they'd do nine more takes, and keep going like this until they were done.|[[Dave Fridmann]]|engineer on ''Pinkerton'', from an interview with ''The Future Heart''<ref>"Making of Pinkerton: Dave Fridmann Details Working On Weezer’s Cult Classic" ''The Future Heart''. 22 July 2011. https://thefutureheart.com/2011/07/22/pinkerton/</ref>}}
+{{Quote|They'd record a song nine times and it would be completely different each time. And then they'd have me edit them together...They would sit down with a list and show me all these edit points they wanted to make. And I would edit the tape together into one complete take, and then they'd decide whether they liked that or not. And if not, then they'd do nine more takes, and keep going like this until they were done.|[[Dave Fridmann]]|engineer on ''Pinkerton'', from an interview with ''The Future Heart''<ref name="thefutureheart">"Making of Pinkerton: Dave Fridmann Details Working On Weezer’s Cult Classic" ''The Future Heart''. 22 July 2011. https://thefutureheart.com/2011/07/22/pinkerton/</ref>}}
 In August 1995, just a few days before Cuomo was set to travel to study at Harvard University, the band gathered to record at Electric Lady Studios in New York City,<ref name="pinklinernotes">''Pinkerton'' (Deluxe Edition) liner notes</ref> the same studio where they recorded their debut. Said guitarist Brian Bell, "We're going for the deeper, darker, more experimental stuff,' but assured fans, 'but we'll always be the Weezer you know and love."<ref>Tobak, Vikki. "[[Detroit News interview with Brian Bell - August 10, 1995|Nerd-chic? Weezer trashes the labels and just plain rocks]]" ''Detroit News''. 10 August 1995</ref> The band worked on "[[Tired of Sex]]," "[[No Other One]]," "[[Getchoo]]," "[[Why Bother?]]," "[[Waiting on You]]," "[[Devotion]]," "[[You Gave Your Love to Me Softly]]," "[[Blast Off!]]," "[[You Won't Get with Me Tonight]]," and "[[Longtime Sunshine]]." Although the band was still, at this point, following the ''Songs from the Black Hole'' blueprint, none of the three latter songs—those written with ''SFTBH'' in mind—made it past this stage of recording.<ref name="pinklinernotes" /> The song "You Won't Get with Me Tonight" was famously axed after, as [[Karl Koch]] recalled in the liner notes to the 2003 ''[[Buddyhead Presents: Gimme Skelter|Gimme Skelter]]'' compilation, he explained to Cuomo that it reminded him of another song ("[[Wikipedia:I Shot the Sheriff|I Shot the Sheriff]]" by Bob Marley).<ref>[[Weezerpedia Discord Q&A with Karl Koch - April 2022]]</ref> The band also attempted to record a coda to conclude the song "Longtime Sunshine," wherein Cuomo, [[Matt Sharp]], and Bell sang a medley of "Longtime Sunshine," "Why Bother?," "[[I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams]]," "No Other One," and "Blast Off!"
-{{Small quote box|I don't know that we were modeling ''Pinkerton'' on anything in particular, but we really like some of the stuff Steve Albini has done, like the [[Pixies]]' ''Surfer Rosa'' or [[Nirvana]]'s ''In Utero''. We were also really into the Flaming Lips—and above all big drum sounds.|[[Rivers Cuomo]], ''Guitar World'', 1997<ref name="schoolhouserock" />}}After insisting that the band hire a producer for their first album, the band's label permitted Weezer to produce their second album themselves.<ref name="pinklinernotes" /><ref name="schoolhouserock">Beaujour, Tom. "[[Guitar World interview with Rivers Cuomo - March 1997|Schoolhouse Rock]]" ''Guitar World''. March 1997</ref> "I've never really wanted to be a producer," said Cuomo, "I just feel that the best way for us to sound like ourselves is to record on our own."<ref name="schoolhouserock" />
+{{Rivers Cuomo quote|[It] was a big change in the way we worked. 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.|[[Addicted to Noise interview with Rivers Cuomo - 1996|''Addicted to Noise'' interview - 1996]]<ref>[[Addicted to Noise interview with Rivers Cuomo - 1996]]</ref>}}
+{{Small quote box|I don't know that we were modeling ''Pinkerton'' on anything in particular, but we really like some of the stuff Steve Albini has done, like the [[Pixies]]' ''Surfer Rosa'' or [[Nirvana]]'s ''In Utero''. We were also really into the Flaming Lips—and above all big drum sounds.|[[Rivers Cuomo]], ''Guitar World'', 1997<ref name="schoolhouserock" />}}After insisting that the band hire a producer for their first album, the band's label permitted Weezer to produce their second album themselves.<ref name="pinklinernotes" /><ref name="schoolhouserock">Beaujour, Tom. "[[Guitar World interview with Rivers Cuomo - March 1997|Schoolhouse Rock]]" ''Guitar World''. March 1997</ref> "I've never really wanted to be a producer," said Cuomo, "I just feel that the best way for us to sound like ourselves is to record on our own."<ref name="schoolhouserock" /> To give the album a live feel, members of the band would record the vocals in tandem around three microphones. According to [[Brian Bell]], the band used so much tremolo picking during the recording process that they began to refer to it as "butterfly picking."<ref>[[:File:Brian Bell Instagram Falling for You caption - 08-25-22.png]]</ref>
 In January of 1996, during Cuomo's winter break, the band reconvened for two weeks at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, to continue the work begun at Electric Lady. The songs "[[Pink Triangle]]" and "[[El Scorcho]]" were also worked on for the first time. Songs conceived for the ''SFTBH'' concept, including "[[Superfriend]]," "[[She Had a Girl]]," and "[[Dude, We're Finally Landing]]" were also recorded but subsequently shelved (or in the case of "Superfriend," taped over).<ref name="pinklinernotes" />
+Work continued at Fort Apache Studios in Boston during Cuomo's spring break. In May, the band continued recording at Sound City in Los Angeles, now with engineer [[Dave Fridmann]]. "I had got to be good friends with the engineer who had been working with them before me, [[Joe Barresi]]," said Fridmann in [[2011]], "and he said that they kept coming in and putting down this Flaming Lips record and saying 'Make it sound like that, make it sound like that!' And finally he just said 'Why don't you call ''that'' guy and get off my back?'"<ref name="thefutureheart" /> By this time, Cuomo had abandoned the ''Black Hole'' concept in favor of the ''Pinkerton'' concept, wherein he likened his own struggles in his life from the prior two years to the story of B.F. Pinkerton, the flawed protagonist of ''[[Madama Butterfly]]''. During these sessions, "[[Across the Sea]]," "[[The Good Life]]," and "[[Falling for You]]" were recorded. The B-sides "[[Getting Up and Leaving]]" and "[[I Swear It's True]]" were worked on, but not finished. Cuomo finished the final song, "[[Butterfly]]" and recorded it at 6:00 AM on the last night at the studio.<ref name="pinklinernotes" />
+Additional overdubs and remaining parts were finished at a number of studios over the following months. During a session at Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park, the band attempted the song "[[Tragic Girl]]" with [[Adam Orth]] on bass (Matt Sharp had already traveled overseas to work on his [[Seven More Minutes|next album]] with [[the Rentals]]). Following the release of the ''Pinkerton'', an additional session was scheduled at Fort Apache (during Cuomo's spring break) with [[Scott Riebling]] on bass to finish the B-sides "Getting Up and Leaving" and "I Swear It's True," and to record a single mix for "Pink Triangle." Ultimately, no commercial release of "Pink Triangle" was ever issued, and the B-sides went unused until the release of the Deluxe Edition of ''Pinkerton'' in [[2010]].<ref name="pinklinernotes" />
-For the album, the band decided against hiring a producer. Cuomo felt it was "the best way for us to sound like ourselves is to record on our own." The intention of the band was to make a raw record, which would better resemble the band's live sound. The main goal was to achieve a big drum sound and abrasive guitar sounds. This was accomplished by connecting multiple distortion pedals. At just under thirty-five minutes, ''Pinkerton'' was according to Cuomo, "short by design." In recording the album over four respective sessions, the band would usually spend two days on rehearsals and then head into the studio to record the tracks. To give the album a live feel, members of the band would record the vocals in tandem around three microphones. According to [[Brian Bell]], the band used so much tremolo picking during the recording process that they began to refer to it as "butterfly picking."<ref>[[:File:Brian Bell Instagram Falling for You caption - 08-25-22.png]]</ref>
-While Cuomo was at Harvard, his busy schedule left his fellow band members with copious amounts of free time. Cuomo himself, while at Harvard, would focus his attention on textbooks about music theory. Various members of the band used this time to work on their respective side-projects. [[Matt Sharp]] would work to promote his side-band [[The Rentals]]' debut album, while [[Patrick Wilson]] and [[Brian Bell]] worked on material for their side-bands [[The Special Goodness]] and [[Space Twins]], respectively. The band regrouped in January 1996, during Cuomo's winter break, for a two-week recording session at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, with an intent on wrapping up the songs they had previously worked on at Electric Lady Studios from last August. As well as recording new songs, "[[El Scorcho]]", and "[[Pink Triangle]]", before the band went their separate ways, once again, while Cuomo returned to Harvard. The other members of the band went back to work on their various projects.
-{{Rivers Cuomo quote|[It] was a big change in the way we worked. 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.|[[Addicted to Noise interview with Rivers Cuomo - 1996|''Addicted to Noise'' interview - 1996]]<ref>[[Addicted to Noise interview with Rivers Cuomo - 1996]]</ref>}}
-During a week-long break, in the spring of 1996, the band regrouped, once again, at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California to continue work on the album. During this break, the band recorded three new songs, "[[The Good Life]]," "[[Across the Sea]]," and "[[Falling for You]]," before Cuomo returned to Cambridge for the remaining weeks of his second semester at Harvard and his university finals.
-The band put the finishing touches on the album in the early summer of 1996 in Los Angeles. During this time, Cuomo would be without a permanent L.A. residence, and stayed at Le Parc Suites in West Hollywood.  At this point, he worried about the transition from the academic lifestyle to the rock lifestyle. In the final ''Pinkerton'' session, two additional tracks, "[[I Swear It's True]]" and "[[Getting Up and Leaving]]" (originally written for the band's debut album but not recorded) were attempted and nearly finished, but were left incomplete just prior to the mixing process.
 ==Writing and composition==