Watch Prince, Miguel, Others Perform At The Billboard Music Awards
This year's b-level awards show season continued last night with the 2013 Billboard Music Awards. As introduced by Janelle Monáe and Erykah Badu, Prince celebrated his Billboard Icon award by tearing through a "Let's Go Crazy" fronted medley with current band 3rd Eye Girl… Miguel landed a pretty hardcore kick on a woman's head during "Adorn" (seriously)… while Icona Pop, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne and others were there because, well, why not?
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Six albums later, Weezer’s embittered old fans still greet each new release with one tired refrain: “It’s not Pinkerton.” The 1996 proto-emo classic—a commercial flop at the time—is the scarlet letter “P” on Rivers Cuomo’s ever-unraveling sweater. Against all odds, its stubborn champions will find much to love on Hurley, Weezer’s indie label debut with Epitaph Records and long-awaited return to that album’s lo-fi, abrasive, sensitive punk sound.
Opening track and first single “Memories” fades in with orchestral grandeur, slamming hard into a buzzsaw guitar elegy for the ‘90s glory days that cheerfully recalls the loose, messy six-string assault of Pinkerton tunes like “Getchoo” and “No Other One”. The classicist pop charm of “Ruling Me” (co-written by Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson) resembles the best Green Album moments, while “Unspoken” takes a Sub Pop friendly acoustic confessional and blows it apart with a drum/guitar battering ram that rocks harder than anything since Maladroit.
It wouldn’t be a proper Weezer record without some missteps, though. “Where’s My Sex?”--a curious yang to Pinkerton’s “Tired of Sex” ying--ranks up there with Cuomo’s stupidest compositions, a dumb lyrical joke substituting “sex” for “socks” that gets lame one line in. The Desmond Child co-penned “Trainwrecks” aims for Freddie Mercury stadium rock glory and only comes across as pompous and silly.
All is forgiven by Track 7: the emotionally terse “Hang On”, featuring vocals, hurdy-gurdy, and mandolin by Scott Pilgrim himself, Michael Cera. (No joke!) The song is a majestic, graceful indie rock anthem— more affecting than all of Make Believe and Raditude combined. After the head-slapping embarrassment of “Can’t Stop Partying”, it’s a great relief to hear a classic song out of this band again.
“Smart Girls” is a typical slice of geek rock that sounds awkward coming from a group that perfected it on their debut, but its dense production gives the tune some weight. Star producer Linda Perry lends some songwriting to “Brave New World”, a grungy pop-punk rocket with a killer chorus. The second album highlight arrives at its end: the basement demo charm of “Time Flies” will bring warm smiles to faces tired of Weezer’s over-produced, mechanical pop exercises.
Hurley is the new millennium Weezer record we’ve been waiting for— loose, emotional, heavy as hell, and written from the heart. Rivers Cuomo & Co. have stuck one to the skeptics, successfully regaining their long-lost indie cred and delivering one of the best records of the year.
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