Weezer Ready "Maladroit"

Weezer are putting the finishing touches on their fourth album, Maladroit, at a Los Angeles studio. The follow-up to 2000's Weezer, a.k.a. "The Green Album," is scheduled for release in April. The title was plucked from a suggestion made by a fan on the weezer.com message boards.

In December, the group began working on tracks that frontman Rivers Cuomo had been working since the completion of "The Green Album," which he describes as "the usual crap: girl stuff." The band has posted demos of fourteen songs that are being considered for Maladroit on www.weezer.com, along with a trio of other new songs. "I like the instant gratification of people hearing my new songs," Cuomo says. "Sometimes you don't get a good response. Bot a lot of times you do, and it feels good."

The lag between Maladroit and "The Green Album" is considerably shorter than the four-year wait between the latter and it's predecessor, 1996's Pinkerton. "I write maybe one song a week," Cuomo says. "That adds up to fifty-two songs over a year. People think I'm some kind of freak, but it feels like I'm slacking. Why should I wait two years for a typical album cycle to end so we can put out another one? We're just kind of doing what we want to do."

Weezer will kick off a fifteen-date North American tour on February 5th in Charlotte, North Carolina. After that, they'll head to Europe in March and to Japan in May.

Weezer tour dates:
2/5: Charlotte, NC, Independence Arena
2/7: Rochester, NY, Blue Cross Arena
2/8: Boston, Tsongas Arena
2/9: Wilkes Barre, PA, First Union Arena
2/11: East Rutherford, NJ, Continental Airlines Arena
2/12: State College, PA, Bryce Jordan Center
2/14: Hamilton, Ontario, Copps Coliseum
2/15: Montreal, Molson Center
2/17: Albany, NY, Pepsi Arena
2/18: Pittsburgh, Mellon Arena
2/21: Nashville, Municipal Auditorium
2/22: Raleigh, NC, Entertainment and Sports Arena
2/24: Tampa, FL, Ice Palace
2/25: West Palm Beach, FL, Mars Amphitheater
2/26: Long Beach, CA, with Offspring and No Doubt

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

More Song Stories entries »

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