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Featured article: Make Believe

Make Believe is Weezer's fifth studio album. It was released on May 10, 2005 to significant commercial success, receiving platinum certification in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the U.K. Despite this, the album received middling reviews from critics. The album's commercial performance was propelled by two highly successful singles, "Beverly Hills" and "Perfect Situation", the former of which remains the band's most successful single to date. The record sees songwriter Rivers Cuomo's "return to musical, emotional bloodletting" (in contrast to the deliberately impersonal songwriting of The Green Album and Maladroit). Cuomo began attending Vipassana meditation courses during the production of the album, at the encouraging of producer Rick Rubin.

Before recording Make Believe, Rick Rubin suggested that the band, which he called one of the most dysfunctional bands he's ever worked with, have sessions with a "communications coach". Pre-production demos for Make Believe were recorded in November of 2003, with proper album production beginning at Cello Studios in December. The band would ultimately be dissatisfied with these recordings, however. Cuomo began recording new demos in January of 2004. Beginning in July, the band recorded again at Grandmaster Studios. Cuomo returned to Harvard in December, with the rest of the band finishing overdubbing through October. In January, the band reconvened at Rick Rubin's studio to assess the album's status. With the band's label requesting a spring release, the band scrambled to complete the album on time, with a lot of the recording and track list decisions being made very late in production, leaving several finished songs on the cutting room floor.

Make Believe was released on May 10, 2005, eleven years to the day of The Blue Album.

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Featured song: "They Are Stupid"

"They Are Stupid" is a song recorded by Weezer during the studio sessions for the band's fifth album, Make Believe. It was ultimately unused, and has since been dubbed by Karl Koch as one of the "Fallen Soldiers." Rivers Cuomo released demos of the song in 2020 as part of the digital compilation Alone IX: The Make Believe Years.

"They Are Stupid" is a reworking of previous demos "Et Tu Brute" and "Over the Mountain." Cuomo worked on the song at S.I.R. Rehearsal Studios in Los Angeles throughout June and July of 2004 during pre-production on Make Believe. Cuomo's final known demo, dated July 20 (two days before the band entered the studio to begin recording the album), features a wholly different chorus melody from the one used in previous demos.

"They Are Stupid" was one of twelve songs that Cuomo felt was right for the album at the beginning of production. The song was completed (sans final mix) at Grandmaster Recorders in Los Angeles between July 22 and October 5, 2004. By late September, the song had—in the words of Koch—"morphed into quite a disco jam [...] complete with keyboard effects, [and] walking basslines."

Until as late as March of 2005, the song was listed as the tenth track on Amazon.com store page for Make Believe. Ultimately, the song went unused and has never been released.

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On this day... May 23

2002 - Weezer performs at Zepp in Osaka, Japan on the Japan World Cup Tour in support of Maladroit. The song "Slave" is performed live for the first time.
2008 - The music video for "Pork and Beans" is released.

May 21 | May 22 | May 23 | May 24 | May 25

Featured quote: Rivers Cuomo on spirituality and his creative process, 2004.

"I had an epiphany: if the feeling these mystics get in union with their God is analogous to the feeling I used to get in union with my music, then their teachings for how to achieve their union should likewise serve to instruct me how to achieve my union. A whole world of spiritual teachings therefore opened up to me for the first time since, as a child, I had decided that I was an “atheist”. I now read these spiritual teachings as coded instructions for how to connect with my musical creativity."

- Rivers Cuomo, What I've Been Up to Since I Left School

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