| Pinkerton | |||||
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| Studio album by Weezer | |||||
| Released | September 24, 1996 November 2, 2010 (Deluxe Edition) |
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| Recorded | September 1995, January–June 1996 at Sound City, Los Angeles; Fort Apache Studios, Boston; Hollywood Sound Recorders, Los Angeles; Rumbo Recorders, Canoga Park; Electric Lady Studios, New York Mixed at Ocean Way Recording, | ||||
| Genre | Alternative rock, emo | ||||
| Length | 34:32 | ||||
| Label | DGC | ||||
| Producer(s) | Weezer | ||||
| Professional reviews | |||||
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| Metascore | 100 | ||||
| Weezer chronology | |||||
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| Singles from Pinkerton | |||||
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Alternate cover
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 Cover of 2010 double-CD deluxe edition |
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Pinkerton is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Weezer, released on September 24, 1996. The album largely chronicles the romantic life of frontman Rivers Cuomo and his disillusionment with rock stardom.[1] The album derives its title from the character B.F. Pinkerton from Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly. Cuomo has described the album as the story of his struggle with his inner Pinkerton.[1]
In contrast to the band's eponymous debut album, Pinkerton features a rougher, more abrasive sound, intending to better capture the band's live sound. Upon release in 1996, the album received mixed reviews and was considered a commercial failure. The album has since received a critical reappraisal. It was certified gold in 2001[2] and platinum in 2016. As of September 2016, Pinkerton has amassed U.S. sales of over 1,000,000. It was the last Weezer album to feature bassist Matt Sharp.
Rivers Cuomo began envisioning Weezer's sophomore album as having more of a new-wave sound, utilizing Moog synthesizers, before the band even recorded their eponymous Blue Album in 1993. Cuomo even envisioned "Buddy Holly" as being on their second album, before Ric Ocasek encouraged the band to include it on Blue.[3] "I Swear It's True," the last song Cuomo wrote before recording Blue, was another such song in consideration.[4]
The song "Tired of Sex" was written in late 1993,[5][6] inspired by Cuomo's frequent, casual, sexual encounters. The song "Getchoo" was written the following January,[5] even appearing in concert set lists during Weezer's tour in support of the The Blue Album.
As early as June of 1994, Cuomo began conceptualizing a narrative (inspired by his own relationships) in which a young man must choose between two women.[1] Later that fall, disillusioned and lonely from the lifestyle of constant touring, Cuomo began developing the concept as a space-themed rock opera/musical, inspired by works he had been listening to while touring, such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miserables, Aida, and Madama Butterfly. "I loved how these works married music and drama," Cuomo recalled in 2008, "how the different characters would sing to each other instead of talk and how the story unfolded through song. I realized that musical-drama could be the larger scale composition I wanted to write for Weezer's second record: a new-wave influenced rock musical in which I could explore my feelings about relationships, stardom, and my life in Weezer."[7] Cuomo would dub this project Songs from the Black Hole (hereafter SFTBH), and began drafting the project in November of 1994.[1]
In February of 1995, during Weezer's tour of Europe, bassist Matt Sharp's father suffered a stroke, requiring Sharp to fly back to the United States, leaving the rest of Weezer in Hamburg, Germany for a week. Cuomo used this time to rent out a studio to record new SFTBH demos.
On April 14, 1995, Cuomo underwent surgery to correct a congenital femoral deficiency in his right leg. Though his legs were of equal length at birth,[8] his right femur had grown two inches shorter in length by the time he was fully grown.[8] The surgery involved breaking his femur and fitting it with a metal brace (called an Ilizarov apparatus). Said Cuomo, "Each day I would turn some screws on the rods so that they would extend and increase the space in the break in my bone. After 6 months, the bone was supposed to be totally filled in and they would take off the metal frame. Two months in I was back out on the road with Weezer, stumbling around with a cane."[8] In September of 1995, Cuomo moved into a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, still limping and requiring the use of a cane.
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.
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,[10] 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."[11] 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.[10] The song "You Won't Get with Me Tonight" was famously axed after, as Karl Koch recalled in the liner notes to the 2003 Gimme Skelter compilation, he explained to Cuomo that it reminded him of another song ("I Shot the Sheriff" by Bob Marley).[12] 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!"
[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.
After insisting that the band hire a producer for their first album, the band's label permitted Weezer to produce their second album themselves.[10][14] "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."[14] 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."[15]
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's Had a Girl," and "Dude, We're Finally Landing" were also recorded but subsequently shelved (or in the case of "Superfriend," taped over).[10]
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.
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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?'"[9] 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.[10]
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 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.[10]
There are some lyrics on the album that you might think are mean or sexist. I will feel genuinely bad if anyone feels hurt by my lyrics but I really wanted these songs to be an exploration of my "dark side" -- all the parts of myself that I was either afraid or embarrassed to think about before. So there's some pretty nasty stuff on the there. You may be more willing to forgive the mean lyrics if you see them as passing low points in a larger story. And this album really is a story: the story of the last 2 years of my life. And as you're probably well aware, these have been two very weird years.
The first four tracks on Pinkerton (in addition to the album's B-sides) were written before Cuomo's leg surgery and subsequent semesters at Harvard, while the subsequent six tracks were written while attending Harvard. "Across the Sea" was inspired by a letter he'd received from a Japanese fan. "I had fantasies over this letter," said Cuomo,[16] "I realized that I’d completely shut myself off from life, but I was still aware of Eros inside me. I hadn’t eliminated that part of me at all. I wasn’t a monk. I was just a perverted hermit." Cuomo subsequently used the contents of the letter to write "Across the Sea." "She basically wrote the lyrics to the first verse and part of the chorus, too," Cuomo later said of the girl.[17] She has since, reportedly, received royalties for her contribution.[17][16]
"The Good Life" was written about Cuomo's frustration with the prior year's lifestyle following his leg surgery. "I think I was becoming frustrated with that hermit's life I was leading, the ascetic life," said Cuomo, "and I think I was starting to become frustrated with my whole dream about purifying myself and trying to live like a monk or an intellectual and going to school and holding out for this ideal, perfect woman. So I wrote that song. And I started to turn around and come back the other way."[18] The song "El Scorcho" references a crush on a half-Japanese woman. "I suppose that halfway through writing the album, I started to realize or become aware of a pattern in my life that I seem to be having a lot of disastrous encounters with half Japanese girls." said Cuomo in 1996.[13] The lyrics referring to wrestlers Grunge and New Jack, as well as to Madama Butterfly's Cio-Cio-San were lifted directly from a classmate's essay that Cuomo was tasked with reviewing as part of an expository writing class.[19] "Pink Triangle" was written about a girl Cuomo befriended who he (erroneously) believed to be a lesbian after seeing her wear a pink triangle button on her backpack.[20]
Pinkerton is named for the character B.F. Pinkerton from Madama Butterfly, a U.S. naval officer (acknowledged by Cuomo to be similar to a touring rock star)[1] who marries a 15-year-old Japanese girl named Cio-Cio-San (the eponymous "Butterfly," from the Japanese word 蝶々, chōchō) and then abandons her. Cuomo has referred to character as "the perfect symbol for the part of myself that I am trying to come to terms with on this album."[1] Other considered titles included "Playboy" and "Diving into the Wreck" (a reference to the poem of the same name by feminist poet Adrienne Rich).[1]
The artwork on the album's cover is "Kambara yoru no yuki" ("Night Snow at Kambara"), a print by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige. Cuomo chose the cover after seeing it on a postcard sent to him by Jennifer Chiba, finding that it "captured the feeling of winter loneliness" he was feeling living in Cambridge.[21]
The album's packaging features other references to Japanese culture and Puccini, among others. The back of the album features a photograph of a Japanese woman. Standard pressings of the album feature Italian text from Madama Butterfly along the edge of the disc: "Dovunque al mondo lo Yankee vagabondo si gode e traffica sprezzando rischi. Affonda l'àncora alla ventura…" Translated into English it reads: "Everywhere in the world, the roving Yankee takes his pleasure and his profit, indifferent to all risks. He drops anchor at random…"[22]
Behind the album's CD tray is a map with the title "Isol Della Farfalla e Penisola Di Cane," Italian for "Island of the Butterfly and Peninsula of Dog." Also on the map are a ship labeled "U.S.S. Pinkerton" and an island labeled "Mykel and Carli Island," an allusion to Weezer's Fan Club founders. Other labels include "Don Giovanni," "Sharpless," and "Cio-Cio-San" (characters from Madama Butterfly), as well as people who influenced Cuomo on the making of the album, including Howard Stern,[23] Yngwie Malmsteen, Brian Wilson, Lou Barlow, Joe Matt, Camille Paglia and Ace Frehley.
Cuomo rejected a proposed music video treatment by Spike Jonze for "El Scorcho" that would have starred Flava Flav. "I want my feelings to come across untainted this time around" said Cuomo,[24] "So when I went to write the songs, I was very careful about being really straightforward and sincere. And not being so ironic, or using weird metaphors or imagery. I really want to communicate my feelings directly, and because I was so careful in writing the songs that way, I'd hate for the video to kinda misrepresent the song, or exaggerate certain aspects." The video for "El Scorcho" was instead directed by Mark Romanek who, after an apparent disagreement, left Cuomo to edit the video himself. It debuted on MTV's 120 Minutes and only received moderate airplay.
On September 23, 1996, the day before the release of Pinkerton, the Pinkerton private investigation and security company filed a temporary restraining order against Geffen and Weezer, seeking a preliminary injunction aimed the album from being marketed. On September 26, Judge John G. Davies dissolved the order, deciding that "the hardship of not releasing the album would be greater for Geffen than any hardship Pinkerton's or its shareholders might incur from consumers who mistakenly think the company had anything to do with the album."[25]
The music video for the album's second single, "The Good Life," was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and features a pizza delivery girl (played by Mary Lynn Rajskub) on her route, interspersed with footage of the band performing, filmed from multiple camera angles simultaneously. A third single, "Pink Triangle," was planned, but not released. On November 6, Weezer performed an acoustic set at Shorecrest High School in Seattle after a student won a contest. Renditions of "The Good Life" and "Pink Triangle" were later released as B-sides.
The Deluxe Edition of Pinkerton was released on November 2, 2010. The 2-disc release features all of the album B-sides, including the unreleased "I Swear It's True," as well as various live recordings and studio outtakes, including the previously undocumented "Tragic Girl." Prior to its release, the “The Death to False Metal & Pinkerton Deluxe Sampler” was sent out to critics for review.
All tracks are written by Rivers Cuomo
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Tired of Sex" | 3:01 |
| 2. | "Getchoo" | 2:52 |
| 3. | "No Other One" | 3:01 |
| 4. | "Why Bother?" | 2:08 |
| 5. | "Across the Sea" | 4:32 |
| 6. | "The Good Life" | 4:17 |
| 7. | "El Scorcho" | 4:03 |
| 8. | "Pink Triangle" | 3:58 |
| 9. | "Falling for You" | 3:47 |
| 10. | "Butterfly" | 2:53 |
| Total length: | 34:32 | |
All tracks are written by Rivers Cuomo, except where noted
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Tired of Sex" | 3:01 |
| 2. | "Getchoo" | 2:52 |
| 3. | "No Other One" | 3:01 |
| 4. | "Why Bother?" | 2:08 |
| 5. | "Across the Sea" | 4:32 |
| 6. | "The Good Life" | 4:17 |
| 7. | "El Scorcho" | 4:03 |
| 8. | "Pink Triangle" | 3:58 |
| 9. | "Falling for You" | 3:47 |
| 10. | "Butterfly" | 2:53 |
| 11. | "You Gave Your Love to Me Softly" (B-Side) | 1:57 |
| 12. | "Devotion" (B-Side) | 3:11 |
| 13. | "The Good Life" (Radio Remix) | 4:08 |
| 14. | "Waiting on You" (B-Side) | 4:13 |
| 15. | "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" (B-Side) | 2:39 |
| 16. | "The Good Life" (Live Acoustic B-Side) | 4:40 |
| 17. | "Pink Triangle" (Radio Remix) | 4:02 |
| 18. | "I Swear It's True" | 3:19 |
| 19. | "Pink Triangle" (Live Acoustic B-Side) | 4:18 |
| 20. | "Interview – 107.7 The End – Blue vs. Pinkerton" (Hidden Track) | 1:32 |
| Total length: | 1:08:31 | |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" | 3:29 | |
| 2. | "The Good Life" (Live at Y100 Sonic Session) | 4:37 | |
| 3. | "El Scorcho" (Live at Y100 Sonic Session) | 4:07 | |
| 4. | "Pink Triangle" (Live at Y100 Sonic Session) | 4:10 | |
| 5. | "Why Bother?" (Live at Reading Festival 1996) | 2:18 | |
| 6. | "El Scorcho" (Live at Reading Festival 1996) | 4:09 | |
| 7. | "Pink Triangle" (Live at Reading Festival 1996) | 4:52 | |
| 8. | "The Good Life" (Live Acoustic at X96) | 4:13 | |
| 9. | "El Scorcho" (Live Acoustic) | 4:26 | |
| 10. | "Across the Sea" (Piano noodles) | 0:38 | |
| 11. | "Butterfly" (Alternate take) | 2:48 | |
| 12. | "Long Time Sunshine" | 4:17 | |
| 13. | "Getting Up and Leaving" | Cuomo/Patrick Wilson | 3:28 |
| 14. | "Tired of Sex" (Tracking rough) | 2:58 | |
| 15. | "Getchoo" (Tracking rough) | 2:57 | |
| 16. | "Tragic Girl" | 5:26 | |
| Total length: | 58:53 | ||
Many songs were recorded during the Pinkerton sessions that never made it onto the final album.[26]
| Reviewer | Rating | Review date | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allmusic |  (5/5)
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Not listed | Stephen Thomas Erlewine |
| Amazon | Not given | Not listed | Robert Burrow |
| CDUniverse | Not given | Not listed | Unsigned |
| IGN |  (9.5/10)
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December 21, 2007 | "JR" |
| Los Angeles Times |  (3.0/5)
|
Unknown | Unknown |
| NME | (7.0/10)
|
Unknown | Unknown |
| The Onion A.V. Club | Not given | November 30, 2009 | Josh Modell |
| Pitchfork Media | (7.5/10)
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September, 1996 | Ryan Schreiber |
| Pitchfork Media (Deluxe) | (10.0/10)
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November 3, 2010 | Ian Cohen |
| Q | (4.0/5)
|
Unknown | Unknown |
| Rolling Stone (1996) | (3.0/5)
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1996 | Rob O'Conner |
| Rolling Stone (2004) | (5.0/5)
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December 9, 2004 | Gavin Edwards |
| Spin | (7.0/10)
|
Unknown | Unknown |
| Tiny Mix Tapes | (5.0/5)
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Not listed | "cowboy dan" |
| Dayton Daily News | (1.0/5)
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October 11, 1996 | Ray Marcano |
| Stereogum | No rating given | April 21, 2016 | Tom Breihan |
In 2003, Pitchfork Media named Pinkerton the 53rd best album of the 1990s.
| Reviewer | Rating | Review date | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Butterfly" (Teenage Victory Songs) | Positive - The Very Best | December 20, 2010 | Teenage Victory Songs |
As Pinkerton was released during the height of the third wave ska movement, it was considered a very different album from what was being released at the time. When it was released, it was considered a critical and commercial failure, however in the years following the release of the album, it would gain a much more positive reputation due to word-of-mouth over the internet. Eventually, the album would be considered among the band's very best work, by both fans and critics alike. In addition, Pinkerton has been influential on alternative rock, and the emerging emo music scene. In 2001, Cuomo later commented on his influence on the Emo scene, "I don’t really know what emo means. But apparently I had something to do with it."
Several mainstream rock bands which later became popular, ranging from Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday, Deftones, The Ataris, Thursday, the Used to Dashboard Confessional, consider the album to be an influence on them. As well as mainstream bands, several underground rock bands also consider the album to be an influence as well, including The Promise Ring and David Leto of the indie rock band Rye Coalition who called the album the "rocker's album of choice."
Pinkerton went platinum in the US on September 16th, 2016.
I told [David Geffen] how we’d just come back from this sophomore slump with “Pinkerton,” and I said something like, “But it’s turned into a real cult phenomenon.” He goes, “ ‘Cult phenomenon’ is a euphemism for failure.”
Cuomo was initially proud of the record, but following the album's perceived "failure," Cuomo distanced himself from the record publicly. "The most painful thing in my life these days is the cult around Pinkerton," Cuomo told Rolling Stone in 2001,[28] "It's just a sick album, sick in a diseased sort of way. It's such a source of anxiety because all the fans we have right now have stuck around because of that album. But, honestly, I never want to play those songs again; I never want to hear them again." In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cuomo called it "a hideous record," adding, "It was such a hugely painful mistake that happened in front of hundreds of thousands of people and continues to happen on a grander and grander scale and just won’t go away. It’s like getting really drunk at a party and spilling your guts in front of everyone and feeling incredibly great and cathartic about it, and then waking up the next morning and realizing what a complete fool you made of yourself."[29]
Cuomo reversed this stance again in subsequent years, however. In 2010, Cuomo told Exclaim, "Right around 2001, when we put out the Green Album, I said a lot of negative, inflammatory things about Pinkerton and about a lot of things. I said a lot of crazy stuff. And those quotes have lived on for the last nine years. And people get confused and they think I still feel that way even though it was something I said in an off-handed way nine years ago. But ever since I've been trying to make it clear that, of course, I think it's a brilliant album. I love it. I love the songs and I love playing those songs and I hope the positive message gets through."[30]
All information is taken from the CD (Pinkerton booklet and liner notes).
| Studio LPs | |
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| Other | |
