Always a band keenly attuned to the fleeting fashions of the internet,
Weezer
were the ripe target of an online campaign. A 14-year-old fan intuited that
would be amenable to covering
Toto
's 1982 chart-topper "Africa," so she started a Twitter campaign in December 2017 to petition the band to do just that. After six months of cajoling,
relented -- by releasing a version of "Rosanna," the hit
had before "Africa." The next week, the band unveiled their cover of "Africa," which swiftly became
's biggest hit since 2005, matching that year's "Perfect Situation" placement at 51 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Somehow, that wasn't the end of the shenanigans. As the single stayed on the charts,
returned the favor by covering
's "Hash Pipe," then
parodied themselves for the long-delayed video for their "Africa," bringing
Weird Al Yankovic
along for good measure.
Just when the "Africa" cycle seemed to finally end,
sprung
The Teal Album
upon the world. Inspired by the success of "Africa,"
cut an entire album of oldies, generally sticking to the '80s, but finding space for
the Turtles
' "Happy Together" and
Ben E. King
's "Stand by Me" -- two '60s chestnuts that were omnipresent during the Reagan era. The exception to this rule is conspicuous: a version of
TLC
's 1999 smash "No Scrubs." By covering a beloved modern R&B hit,
is opening themselves up to scorn and ridicule -- the deliberately gangly band is certainly not smooth enough to replicate
's groove -- but that's kind of the point of
: it's designed to generate online chatter for its existence, not for what it is. Taken on a strictly musical terms,
is pretty anodyne stuff.
replicates the arrangements of beloved songs, adds a bit more fuzz on the guitar solos, and flattens the vocal affectations, which amounts to one weird trick:
doesn't attempt to make the songs their own, yet these versions unmistakably sound like
. Chalk it up to the curious obsessions of
Rivers Cuomo
, a songwriter who used to carry around a notebook so he could dissect why one pop song worked and another didn't. The meticulous replications of
aren't a million miles away from that notebook, but by having
pop into familiar settings,
Cuomo
has created a hyper-saturated, uncanny valley, where nothing seems quite real. An ideal album for the internet, in other words. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine