Weezerpedia:Featured article May 2025
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The following page holds the content that will be "transcluded" (i.e. sent over to) the Main Page as a featured article for May 2025. For assistance with editing, please consult Help:Featured article.
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.