Weezer mainman Rivers Cuomo has released a whole load of covers onto YouTube, but many fans are not sure if it was all an accident.
The tracks are in a playlist titled ‘randum cuverz’. They’re all lo-fi, acoustic takes on, well, modern standards – Jolene, Hotel California, Nirvana’s Lithium, Creep by Radiohead, Hey Ya! By Outkast, Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Sweet Child O’ Mine, Billie Jean and Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
Many of the covers date from 2018/ 2019 but there are some that seem to go back at least 20 years. Some of them are songs that Weezer actually went on to cover live, like Lithium.
But many fans are speculating that the covers aren’t a sudden act of beneficence, but that Cuomo has accidentally made the videos public while he’s been privately archiving his Dropbox. Comments include “’Private upload for playlist: randum cuver’ Who’s gonna tell Rivers it’s not private” and “Rivers, you put the videos on public.”
There has, as yet, been no comment from Cuomo himself. So who knows what he intended?
What we do know for certain is that a new Weezer studio album – which will be their 16th in all – is in the works. The band released its first single Shine Again last month and have been playing some unusual gigs, what they are calling their ‘initiation shows’ - one was at a rooftop event in LA, another at a branch of chain restaurant Barney’s Beanery.
And if you haven’t been lucky enough to catch one of those, Cuomo and co have pencilled in an extensive US tour for the autumn. ‘The Gathering’ kicks off at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento on September 8 and winds its way all over the States, concluding at Los Angeles’ evocatively-named Crypto.com Arena on October 24.
