Rivers Cuomo just provided fans with a treasure trove of fascinating musical scraps. Under the banner of "randum cuverz," the Weezer frontman uploaded 15 solo acoustic covers to YouTube. They sound like Voice Memos, though some of them are old enough to predate smartphones. Some are only a few seconds. But on the whole, they're a lot more fun to listen to than most of Weezer's recent output. I'm usually too distracted by the band's various gimmicks to remember how good Cuomo's voice can be, but when it's attached to these well-known songs, the beauty shines through.
The songs included are as follows: Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," Sam Hunt's "Body Like A Back Road," Post Malone and Quavo's "Congratulations," Morgan Evans' "Country Outta My Girl," Radiohead's "Creep," Nirvana's "Drain You," Metallica's "Enter Sandman," Outkast's "Hey Ya," Eagles' "Hotel California," Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)," Dolly Parton's "Jolene," Nirvana's "Lithium," Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine," Green Day's "When I Come Around," and Harry Nilsson's "Without You."
These recordings are not new. Many are dated 2018 or 2019 in the filenames, and some go back more than 20 years. Weezer have covered many of these songs live before, but some, such as the Sam Hunt and Whitney Houston tracks, appear to be totally new to the Weezerverse. I'm struck by how much the raw "Without You" performance, which supposedly appeared on MySpace in shorter form way back in 2003, takes on the essence of Pinkerton closer "Butterfly."
Redditors speculate that Cuomo might have been attempting to privately archive some home demos from his Dropbox and accidentally made them public, but if it's an accident, he's not yet gone out of his way to remove them. I'm grateful for the fun curio. Dive into the full playlist below.
