Pinkerton (album)
Pinkerton is the second studio album by the American rock band Weezer, released on September 24, 1996, by DGC Records. The guitarist and vocalist Rivers Cuomo wrote most of Pinkerton while studying at Harvard University, after abandoning plans for a rock opera, Songs from the Black Hole. It was the last Weezer album to feature the bassist Matt Sharp, who left in 1998.
To better capture their live sound, Weezer self-produced Pinkerton, creating a darker, more abrasive album than their self-titled 1994 debut. Cuomo's lyrics express loneliness and disillusionment with the rock lifestyle. The title comes from the character BF Pinkerton from Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, whom Cuomo described as an "asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star". Like Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton views Japanese culture from the perspective of an outsider who considers Japan fragile and sensual.
Pinkerton produced the singles "El Scorcho" and "The Good Life". It debuted at number 19 on the US Billboard 200, failing to meet sales expectations. It received mixed reviews; Rolling Stone readers voted it the third-worst album of 1996. For subsequent albums, Cuomo returned to more traditional pop songwriting and less personal lyrics.
In subsequent years, Pinkerton was reassessed and achieved acclaim. Several publications named it one of the best albums of the 1990s, and it was certified platinum in the US in 2016. Several emo bands have credited it as an influence.
Background
In 1994, after the multi-platinum success of Weezer's self-titled debut album, Weezer took a break from touring for Christmas. The singer and songwriter, Rivers Cuomo, felt limited by rock music. Every night, after performing with Weezer, he listened to Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera Madama Butterfly; the "depth of emotion and sadness and tragedy" inspired him to go further with his music.In his home state of Connecticut, Cuomo began preparing material for Weezer's next album using an 8-track recorder. His original concept was a rock opera, Songs from the Black Hole, that would express his mixed feelings about success. Weezer developed Songs from the Black Hole through intermittent recording sessions throughout 1995.
On April 14, 1995, Cuomo, who was born with one leg shorter than the other, had extensive leg surgery to lengthen his right leg, followed by weeks of painful physical therapy. This affected his songwriting, as he would spend long periods hospitalized, unable to walk without the use of a cane, and under the influence of painkillers.
In the same period, Cuomo applied to study classical composition at Harvard University with a letter describing his disillusionment with the rock lifestyle: "You will meet two hundred people every night, but each conversation will generally last approximately thirty seconds ... Then you will be alone again, in your motel room. Or you will be on your bus, in your little space, trying to kill the nine hours it takes to get to the next city, whichever city it is."
By May 1996, Cuomo's songwriting had become "darker, more visceral and exposed, less playful", and the Songs from the Black Hole concept was abandoned. Weezer's second album would instead feature songs written while Cuomo was at Harvard, chronicling his loneliness and frustration, or what Cuomo referred to as his "dark side".
Recording
In 1995, shortly before Cuomo left to study at Harvard, Weezer spent two weeks at New York City's Electric Lady Studios, where they had recorded their debut, and tracked the songs "Why Bother?", "Getchoo", "No Other One" and "Tired of Sex". Weezer hoped to explore "deeper, darker, more experimental stuff" and better capture their live sound. They decided against hiring a producer, feeling that "the best way for us to sound like ourselves is to record on our own". To give the album a live, "raw" feel, Cuomo, the guitarist Brian Bell and the bassist, Matt Sharp, recorded their vocals in tandem around three microphones rather than overdubbing them separately.While Cuomo was at Harvard, other Weezer members worked on side projects. Sharp promoted Return of the Rentals, the debut album by his band the Rentals, and Bell and the drummer, Patrick Wilson, worked on material for their bands the Space Twins and the Special Goodness. In January 1996, during Cuomo's winter break, Weezer regrouped for a two-week session at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, to complete the songs they had worked on in August. The Weezer collaborator Karl Koch said Sound City was "a significant part of the sound".
After recording "El Scorcho" and "Pink Triangle", they separated while Cuomo returned to Harvard. During Cuomo's 1996 spring break, Weezer regrouped at Sound City Studios and recorded "The Good Life", "Across the Sea" and "Falling for You" before Cuomo returned to Harvard for his finals. They completed Pinkerton in mid-1996 in Los Angeles. Two additional tracks, "I Swear It's True" and "Getting Up and Leaving", were abandoned prior to mixing.
Music and lyrics
Like Weezer's debut, Pinkerton is an alternative rock album with elements of power pop and heavy metal, but with a darker, less polished sound. According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, "The guitars rage and squeal, the beats are brutal and visceral, the vocals are mixed to the front, filled with overlapping, off-the-cuff backing vocals... In short, it sounds like the work of a live band."The lyrics feature self-deprecating humor. Writing from a more direct and personal perspective, Cuomo wrote of his dysfunctional relationships, sexual frustration, and struggles with identity. Pinkerton charts his "cycle between 'lame-o and partier. Erlewine described it as a "singer-songwriter record representing Rivers Cuomo's bid for respectability".
At just under 35 minutes, Pinkerton is, according to Cuomo, "short by design". The first song, "Tired of Sex", written before the release of the Blue Album, has Cuomo describing meaningless sex with groupies and wondering why true love eludes him. "Across the Sea" was inspired by a letter Cuomo received from a Japanese fan: "When I got the letter, I fell in love with her ... I was very lonely at the time, but at the same time I was very depressed that I would never meet her."
"The Good Life" chronicles the rebirth of Cuomo after an identity crisis as an Ivy League loner. Cuomo, who felt isolated at Harvard, wrote it after "becoming frustrated with that hermit's life I was leading, the ascetic life. 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 perfect, ideal woman. And so I wrote the song. And I started to turn around and come back the other way."
"El Scorcho" addresses Cuomo's shyness and inability to approach a woman while at Harvard; he explained that the song "is more about me, because at that point I hadn't even talked to the girl, I didn't really know much about her." "Pink Triangle" describes a man who falls in love, but discovers the object of his devotion is a lesbian.
Pinkerton is named after the character BF Pinkerton from Madama Butterfly, who marries and then abandons a Japanese woman named Butterfly. Calling him an "asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star", Cuomo felt the character was "the perfect symbol for the part of myself that I am trying to come to terms with on this album". Other titles considered included Playboy and Diving into the Wreck.
Like Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton views Japanese culture from the perspective of an outsider who considers Japan fragile and sensual; the Japanese allusions are infused with the narrator's romantic disappointments and sexual frustration. Cuomo wrote that Pinkerton "is really the clash of East vs West. My hindu, zen, kyokushin , self-denial, self-abnegation, no-emotion, cool-faced side versus my Italian-American heavy metal side." The songs are mostly sequenced in the order in which he wrote them, and so "the album kind of tells the story of my struggle with my inner Pinkerton".
Artwork
The cover artwork is derived from from the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige's 1830s series 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō. Lyrics from Madama Butterfly are printed on the Pinkerton CD in their original Italian: "Everywhere in the world, the roving Yankee takes his pleasure and his profit, indifferent to all risks. He drops anchor at random..."Behind the CD tray is a map with the title Isola della farfalla e penisola di cane. On the map are a ship named USS Pinkerton and "Mykel and Carli Island", alluding to Weezer's fan club founders, and the names of some of Cuomo's influences, including Howard Stern, Yngwie Malmsteen, Brian Wilson, Lou Barlow, Joe Matt, Camille Paglia and Ace Frehley.
Release and promotion
Todd Sullivan, an A&R representative from Weezer's record label, Geffen, described Pinkerton as a "very brave record", but worried: "What sort of light does this put the band in? It could have been interpreted as them being a disposable pop band." Geffen was pleased with the record and felt that fans would not be disappointed.Weezer turned down a video treatment for the lead single, "El Scorcho", proposed by Spike Jonze, who had helped raise Weezer's status with his videos for "Undone – The Sweater Song" and "Buddy Holly". Cuomo said: "I really want the songs to come across untainted this time around… I really want to communicate my feelings directly and because I was so careful in writing that way. I'd hate for the video to kinda misrepresent the song, or exaggerate certain aspects." The "El Scorcho" video features Weezer playing in an assembly hall in Los Angeles, surrounded by light fixtures flashing in time to the music. The director, Mark Romanek, quit after arguments with Cuomo, leaving Cuomo to edit the video himself. The video debuted on MTV's 120 Minutes and received moderate airplay.
Pinkerton debuted at number 19 on the US Billboard 200 chart, its highest position. It sold 47,000 copies its first week, falling far short of the sales of Weezer's first album. "El Scorcho" reached number 19, and "The Good Life" reached number 32. As Pinkerton was not meeting sales expectations, Weezer felt pressure to make another music video more to the liking of MTV. The video for "The Good Life", directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, stars Mary Lynn Rajskub as a pizza delivery girl, and uses simultaneous camera angles appearing on screen as a fractured full image. Geffen rush-released the video to try to save the album, but was not successful.