Rivers Cuomo has done battle with his fans, his record label, success itself. But the title of Weezer's eighth album is an olive branch to the ride-or-die nerd side of his audience: A Weezer record named after Hurley from Lost is like Rick Ross slapping a picture of Scarface-era Pacino on an album cover and calling it Tony. This is also Weezer's first album on an indie label, giving Cuomologists a chance to test their long-standing theory that a Rivers freed from Geffen Records might be a less dickish genius.

In perfect contrarian fashion, Hurley is their most "corporate" record ever. Cuomo co-writes with a bevy of A-list song doctors (Linda Perry, Tony Kanal, Desmond Child), and calls in cameos from the Jackass crew and Michael Cera, seemingly just for the hell of it. The result: a Weezer record, some great cornball pop-metal tuneage, some irony, some insanity.

"Memories" is a hilarious ode to how awesome it was to be in Weezer back in the mid-Nineties ("When Audioslave was still Rage"); "Ruling Me" is one of Cuomo's best girl-drunk rockers; and "Hang On" is power-ballad heaven. We also get two classic-Cuomo doses of jaded angst: the hipster-bashing "Trainwrecks" and the horny-Harvard-dude anthem "Smart Girls." Of course, it wouldn't be Weezer without some tossed-off dementia. "Where's My Sex?" is a Pinkerton-esque song about, um, sox, with the word "sex" sung in the place of "sox" — like, "I can't go out without my sex/It's cold outside and my toes get wet." As Hurley might say, "Uh, dude, you OK?"

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.