Pinkerton

Much like Hamlet is a young man’s play, I feel that Pinkerton is something of a young man’s album.
—Teenage Victory Songs, "Why Bother?"

Pinkerton is Alternative Rock band Weezer's second album, released on 24 September 1996. The album was initially planned as a Rock Opera named Songs from the Black Hole, but the concept was eventually abandoned, and the final album combined songs that were discarded from Black Hole and new, Creator Breakdowny material.

As mentioned above, frontman Rivers Cuomo's initial plan to follow their self-titled debut was to create a Rock Opera that he described as "an analogy for taking off, going out on the road and up the charts with a rock band, which is what was happening to me at the time I was writing this and feeling like I was lost in space". The songs were also influenced by somewhat of a Creator Breakdown as Cuomo underwent painful surgery to correct the fact that he was born with one leg shorter than the other, and was accepted to study at Harvard with a letter describing his disillusionment with the rock lifestyle but found himself isolated and lonely.

The album was recorded in September 1995, January, March and June 1996 at a variety of studios (Sound City and Hollywood Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, Fort Apache in Boston, Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park and Electric Lady Studios in New York) during Cuomo's breaks from Harvard, which left the other band members plenty of free time to indulge in their own projects. Intending a rawer, Darker and Edgier sound, Cuomo chose to have the band self-produce the record with 12 engineers, replacing Ric Ocasek's earlier radio-friendly production with a pounding drum sound and vicious, aggressive guitar sounds accomplished by connecting them to multiple distortion pedals at once.

The title of the album comes from the character in Madame Butterfly, but right before its release the Pinkerton security agency attempted to sue for trademark infringement, only to have their case thrown out almost instantly. The first single, "El Scorcho", stiffed on MTV, possibly due to Cuomo's refusal to indulge in the "gimmicky" videos that made "Buddy Holly" a success, and despite subsequent singles "The Good Life" and "Pink Triangle", Pinkerton stopped at #19 on the Billboard charts and endured a severe critical beatdown - infamously, Rolling Stone's review criticised every song save "Butterfly" and a reader poll named it one of the worst albums of 1996. Despite this, the album settled on being a Cult Classic and slowly but steadily gathered a fanbase, and years later the consensus altered and it became recognised as Weezer's Magnum Opus.

Tropes used in Pinkerton include:
  • Asian Gal with White Guy: Certain lyrics of the album nod to Rivers' famous Race Fetish, such as "Goddamn you half-Japanese girls/Do it to me every time!" from "El Scorcho".
  • Asian Speekee Engrish: The opening lines of "Across the Sea" have this, since they're quoting from a letter Rivers got from a Japanese fan (who apparently "are 18 year old girl/Who live in small city of Japan").
  • Book Ends: As snarked in the Pitchfork review, Pinkerton begins with "Tired of Sex", where Rivers Cuomo rants about having meaningless sex and desiring true love, but ends with "Butterfly", where Rivers Cuomo abandons the newly-found true love in favour of more meaningless sex.
  • Concept Album: While the Rock Opera idea was scrapped, Pinkerton retains some elements of a concept album, chiefly due to its lyrical subject matter.
  • Continuity Nod: "Falling for you" gets mentioned in "El Scorcho", only for a song named "Falling for You" to appear shortly afterwards. "Falling for You" itself mentions "turning in my rockstar card", which is a nod to the lyrics of "The Good Life", and the aforementioned girl's cello from "El Scorcho" makes another appearance.
  • Creator Backlash: Rivers admits in this interview that he was severely embarrassed by how Pinkerton sunk on the charts and received a critical pasting, feeling that it was his fault that he had exposed Too Much Information about himself. As a result, he suffered from crippling self-doubt for a long time and steered Weezer back into a Lighter and Softer direction, hoping to avoid the backlash that Pinkerton had suffered.

Rivers (2001): It's a hideous record... 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.

  • Creator Breakdown: Rivers admitted some of the material was inspired by the isolation he felt at Harvard, when he could only write "while the dinner was in the microwave" because he was otherwise either doing homework or lying in bed on painkillers. "The Good Life" is most heavily inspired by this, nodding to his slovenly appearance and the "old man cane" he needed to walk with during leg surgery.
  • Darker and Edgier: Big time compared to The Blue Album.
  • Dreadful Musician: Alluded to in "Falling for You", where Rivers tries to play the cello but fails miserably ("I can't believe how bad I suck, it's true"). This could be more Self-Deprecation since he is a bit of a multi-instrumentalist, or simply a reflection of the fact that the cello is quite hard to play for beginners.
  • Executive Meddling: Surprisingly averted: Geffen was very pleased with the album, and A&R representative Todd Sullivan even described it as "very brave". However, the fact that it sunk so badly made Geffen refuse to allow Weezer to self-produce The Green Album.
  • Emo: Pinkerton has commonly been cited as an influence not only on Alternative Rock in general but on Emo specifically, possibly due to its raw production and the lyrics painting what Pitchfork called "an uncomfortably honest self-portrait" of Cuomo. However, unlike later Emo bands that cited it as an influence, Pinkerton contains a few songs where the band's Power Pop roots shine through ("The Good Life" and "Across The Sea"), some clearly less angsty moments ("Falling for You") as well as a sense of humour, chiefly in the self-mocking lyrics of "The Good Life" and "El Scorcho" as well as Matt Sharp's backing vocals and interjections ("I've HAD it!") and the videos for "El Scorcho" and "The Good Life".
  • Freudian Excuse: The bridge of "Across the Sea" tries to invoke this.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: Considering some of the lyrics the "heroic" part may be in question, but on some songs Cuomo goes to worrying extremes with the self-criticism, such as asking for his head to be cracked open in "Why Bother?".
  • Ignored Epiphany: Several songs have moments where Rivers acknowledges that his behaviour is wrong, like in "Tired of Sex" ("I know I'm a sinner"), "Getchoo" ("You know this is breaking me up/You think that I'm some kind of freak"), the chorus of "Across the Sea" ("I think it would be wrong"), "The Good Life" ("Excuse the bitching/I shouldn't complain" and "Who do I got to blame?/Nobody but me"), but it takes about a half-hour before "Butterfly" drops the self-pity and Playing the Victim Card.
  • I'm a Man, I Can't Help It: Some of the lyrics enter this territory, especially "Tired of Sex" ("I'm sorry, here I go/I know I'm a sinner/But I can't say no!") and "Getchoo" ("But if you'd come back to me/Then you would surely see/That I'm just fooling around").
  • Love Hurts: The general theme of Pinkerton. Variations include:
  • Lyrical Dissonance: Out of the two bounciest, most accessible tracks on Pinkerton, "The Good Life" is Rivers freaking out about What Have I Become?, and "El Scorcho" cheerfully mentions going into a girl's room and reading her diary.
  • Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: Most of the Pinkerton is about a 5, with "Tired of Sex" and "Getchoo" pushing the album into a 6, and the acoustic "Butterfly" representing a 1.
  • Most Writers Are Male And Angsty: The lyrics of Pinkerton are essentially a Too Much Information-sharing of Rivers Cuomo's romantic misadventures, so at some points they can come across as creepy or self-centered.
  • Pop Punk: "Why Bother?".
  • Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The chorus of "The Good Life", and some lines in "El Scorcho".
  • Reality Subtext: Rivers once admitted to fans one of the original lines in the second verse of "Tired of Sex" was "Tuesday night I'm making Gwen". Gwen happened to be a real person he was dating but her family disliked him somewhat, so he changed the name to "Lyn".
  • Record Producer: The band self-produced the album, with engineering by Joe Barresi, Billy Bowers, Jim Champagne, David Dominguez, Greg Fidelman, Dave Fridmann, Rob Jacobs, Adam Kasper, Dan McLaughlin, Cliff Norrell, Jack Joseph Puig and Jim Rondinelli.
  • Self-Deprecation: "The Good Life" and "El Scorcho", while inspired by Cuomo's real life angst at being lonely, are mostly of the joking variety. "Falling for You" also contains the line "What could you possibly see in little ol' three-chord me?", coming right after one of the more complex chord progressions and solos of the album.
  • Shout-Out: The album's title comes from the main character of Madame Butterfly.
  • Shrinking Violet: According to Word of God, "El Scorcho" was inspired by Cuomo's inability to say hello to a Harvard student he had a crush on, which is outright spelled out before the last chorus with "But that's just a stupid dream that I won't realize/Cos I can't even look in your eyes without shaking, and I ain't faking".
  • Studio Chatter: The beginning of "Across the Sea" consists of a door opening, Pat Wilson laughing and several random notes on piano and flute. The beginning of "Falling For You" features one of the band members' amps randomly picking up a Korean radio signal, specifically an advertisment saying "What company makes this product?".
    • A few songs on the deluxe edition contain audible studio chatter somewhere within the song. "Across The Sea Piano Noodles", "Butterfly (Alternate Take)", and "Longtime Sunshine" are notable examples.
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