Rivers Cuomo reveals the decision behind releasing new album OK Human this month, ahead of Van Weezer in May.
While fans were very pleasantly surprised to learn that we're going to be getting a new Weezer record in just a couple of days' time, Rivers Cuomo has explained why the album – OK Human – is arriving before the band's other new full-length, Van Weezer, in May.
The frontman has told NME that Weezer actually finished up the more understated OK Human before they received the offer to join Green Day and Fall Out Boy on the huge Hella Mega Tour in massive venues across the world (which, of course, is still to happen). However, he realised that OK Human wouldn't translate as well in these kinds of stadiums and arenas: “We were like, ‘Okay, we just made the worst possible type of album you could make before a stadium rock tour,’” Rivers says.
In OK Human's place Weezer got to work on a hair-metal and stadium-rock-inspired record, Van Weezer – an album they thought would work much better live on the Hella Mega run. But we all know what then happened next…
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“So we were like: 'Well, now we’ve just made the worst possible album for a time when you can’t actually tour or perform or rock out,'” Rivers says of the pandemic. “When nobody is going to concerts, how can you possibly promote a stadium rock album?”
Hence the decision to switch the albums around again, moving OK Human (a “quirky, personal, non-commercial album with no big guitars”) forwards, and dropping Van Weezer in the summer to coincide with the start of Weezer's global run with Green Day and Fall Out Boy – which, the frontman says, is seemingly still going ahead as planned right now.
So there you go. Ahead of the release of OK Human, Weezer recently shared new single All My Favorite Songs – check that out below:
OK Human is due out this Friday, while Van Weezer will arrive on May 7.
