Rivers Cuomo - Artistry

Artistry

Cuomo has cited a wide variety of musical influences throughout the years, from artists as diverse as The Beatles, Kiss, Nirvana, Lou Barlow, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Brian Wilson and Giacomo Puccini. He took it upon himself to become a student of rock and pop music when in the late 90s, Cuomo created "The Encyclopedia of Pop" for himself, a three-ring binder which broke down the mechanics of pop and rock songs featuring songs by Nirvana, Green Day and Oasis.

Cuomo has written and recorded over 801 tracks in his lifetime, either with Weezer, with earlier bands, or as self-recorded demos. Despite the large amount of unreleased material that has been made available by Cuomo on the internet, large chunks of his work remain unheard by fans. These include certain demos for The Blue Album, various songs from the scrapped Songs from the Black Hole project, over a hundred songs he composed and demoed throughout 1999 (songs which he has described as ranging from "drone-y Romantic," "abrasive dissonance" and "riffy pop-rock") and well over a hundred songs that didn't make the cut for Make Believe. Recently on Cuomo's MySpace he began satisfying fans' need to hear these unreleased demos "in the most legal way" he could by posting sheet music and lyrics for the Songs From the Black Hole tracks "She's Had A Girl", "Oh Jonas" and "Who You Callin' Bitch?" as well as the Blue Album-era demo "Getting Up and Leaving."

He almost never swears in any of his songs and often uses minced oaths such as "bee-yotch" instead of "bitch" (with the exception of "Butterfly" from Pinkerton). He attributes this to The Beach Boys, saying "Weezer came up at a time when Jane's Addiction released Nothing's Shocking—everyone was trying to be controversial. We looked back to rock & roll's pre-drug days—to the clean images of the Beach Boys—that felt, ironically, rebellious." The word "fucking" does appear on Raditude's "Can't Stop Partying", but it is used by guest rapper Lil Wayne, not by Cuomo. He also uses the word "Goddamn" in the first verse of "The Sweater Song", the third verse of "Across the Sea", the opening of "El Scorcho", and the bridge in "Falling for You".

He has been known to use experimentation to inspire his writing, for example, fasting for a day and then writing a song, as he did on "Hold Me." Cuomo has familiarity with a wide array of musical instruments: besides the guitar, he is also skilled at the piano, and bass guitar (he frequently demoed songs on his own, a la the 1995 Fort Apache Studios Pinkerton demos, and can be seen playing the bass in the Weezer DVD Video Capture Device). Cuomo also plays clarinet (as heard on Alone and SFTBH track "Longtime Sunshine" and the .com-released demo "Clarinet Waltz"), drums (as heard on Alone, in concerts during "Photograph", two songs on the red album and some tracks on Hurley), trumpet (as heard on "Victory on the Hill" from "Alone II") and harmonica.