wow this song is just unbelievable [Music] what are you listening to bird with a broken wing oh cool that song is unbelievable thanks yeah i love that one i love that song that is like mccartney harrison levels like that's mastery bro thanks yeah i i feel the same way like it's so so moving can you can we talk about that song before we talk any further about this album just
because i can't shake the image from my head and just like don't feel bad for me i'm right where i want to be like wow like where were you when you wrote that i i was literally right here um and gosh gosh i wasn't prepared to talk about that one i i think i was just feeling pretty uh pretty irrelevant and passed over and like uh past my prime i guess and
just feeling pretty sorry for myself no but while you you really tapped into that emotion and you found something and you were able to express it and turn it into art i mean you've probably lost track of the amount of times that music has shown up for you like that where you just didn't know how else to get past it in a song gave you the key
yeah that's a good point man that's uh i remember starting in in my 20s like my my my song started to do that for me it was just is the greatest solace you you could feel in your life uh is listening back to recording of your song and be like oh yeah like yeah he gets me i get me it's just it's to hear it articulated so precisely uh is it's just a wonderful
feeling of being seen and heard it's the most beautiful trade because you get to better understand yourself in ways you could never do cerebrally and we get to better understand that we're not alone because there'll be people out there that'll hear bird with a broken wing and go that's okay like i'm all right i can feel like this today because
it's a totally relevant feeling to feel around well congratulations on surprising us once again your band has just become so full of surprises i mean you always were i mean you know from the minute you came out with your debut album and just sold millions of records and then dropped pinkerton and then disappeared it's like surprises all the time
um but i much prefer these surprises where we get more music yeah and this record sounds to me like it wasn't part of the plan um that it was something that kind of presented itself even to you in the band because i felt like we were on a one-way ticket to van weezer yeah well i think we started this record in 2017 and it was i i just went over to jake's
house jake is the producer and he had the idea for the album it's just like this tiny little seed of an idea he planted in my brain that day it was all right just you and a piano and then an orchestra and it's going to be like super personal quirky songs that only you could write not worrying about commercial potential at all and and he gave me another album called
nelson sings newman that came out in the early 70s and he said listen to this check this out and then bring in all your your love of classical music of beethoven and bach and just really go for it and it i was just so excited from day one and the songs came very quickly and easily and we recorded then then we recorded the strings at abbey road and recorded the band and uh
let's say we're about 90 done and then the whole hella mega thing happened it's like okay this is going to be your 2020 you're going out with with green day and fall out boy and you guys better bring the rock because these are the big boys and you want to look good and you're going to be in these stadiums with like 80 000 screaming rock fans and we're like uh
okay we have this piano orchestra with introspective thongs hello miami it's not the wizards show you're expecting appreciate your patience so yeah um we we decided you know what let's let's put this one on hold for a minute and let's make like this killer stadium heavy metal rock album yeah and so we we we went ahead with van weezer
we got that one wrapped up and we're about to put that one out and then the pandemic happened and the whole tour got bumped to 2021 so at that point we're like well we can't put out this heavy metal record now and no one wants to run how can you promote a rock album if you can't rock yeah so well um at that point we said let's go back and finish up okay human yeah and
so that that's where we are now we've got two albums coming out in the space of two months here's the bittersweet thing that is a weezer fan a long-suffering and long-obsessed weezer fan who's been just waiting to try and find some kind of rhythm to keep my mind at ease that i'm going to get a weezer out but i'm not going to get a
weezer out what's going to happen how's that going to happen right that it finally caught up to even you that even you were surprised even you're like man i can't even control the jokes anymore like joke's on me now like yeah well uh it's good man weezer is prepared whatever the world throws at us we got an album for you yeah no you sure do this is a stunner um
and you know i speak to musicians who get to a point in their lives where they're able to really um lean into the idea of orchestration um completely it's something that people dabble in or to create new emotional resonance in a song but if you really lean into orchestration completely it has to be a certain point in your life and in your career where you really feel
like you're emotionally ready to experience that you know what was it like for you hearing these songs that you wrote at your piano sometimes feeling at your most vulnerable come to life with a 38 piece orchestra which is i mean it's an out of world experience oh yeah it's oh my god i i knew this day was coming like i've always been such a fan of classical
music and and opera and um and i i knew it was coming i i just i think and and yet i feel like it's overdue like um i just kind of got stuck in in this pattern of of like okay we're a rock band this is what we do we don't want to get soft too soon um it's this rock thing seems to be working and uh yeah uh but you know really getting encouragement from jake
and then you know if there's a light went off like oh this is going to be great and then and then man hearing it back for the first time with the the orchestra it's like yeah those are the chords i wrote and that's the melody i wrote but man it's just takes like so much more width yeah it's like seeing in in three dimensions for the first time or
something it's just gorgeous and i i can't believe uh i can't believe we haven't done it before because you have to get in my opinion you have to get to a point where you are emotionally prepared for the experience you are emotionally prepared for that experience because otherwise you may not appreciate it for what it really is which is
like you said these ideas and these emotions these thoughts brought into vivid just 8 8k hd 3d just like you know you've written so many songs but you can't prepare for for that yeah i would be interested to go back and hear some of the early albums like i was getting experience ask you i was going to ask you which album do you think off the top of your head would be
the one that would best fit now that you've done this experience with an album purposely built for orchestration which of your previous weezer albums do you think would be a natural fit on step one the one i'd be most interested in hearing is pinkerton those are the most com complex songs and they're the most emotional songs and yet um
the the way we record it is so raw four-piece rock noise you know i'd be really interested to hear that uh with an orchestra you've got such an opportunity now because if you wanted to express it through that that filter because we're entering into a really important milestone i mean 25 years this year for that album that's right yeah um maybe in the fall we can
put together some kind of tour where the you know theaters with with an orchestra incredible and do okay human in pinkerton you know so much was was amongst fans who fell in love with you so quickly like it was just an overnight obsession that you know the debut album really i think we all really got the nuance of the band really quickly as fans
it wasn't like oh cool this fits into the mtv box you know i was like nah there's something really deep going on here there's stories here there's real insecurities and anxieties here this is what you really look for in in a life in a lifetime relationship with music you know pinkerton came out and um it just seemed like the whole thing had had tipped upside down and you were
searching for a way out of something and and i think as we get to 25 years on that i sort of wonder how your perspective on that time in your life has changed in relation to that album and who you were and what was going on i don't think my perspective has changed at all i feel like that was such a rough time and just uh everything went wrong and and and i
did so i made so many wrong moves and so many self-destructive moves and and uh destructive of other people too so i i just have so many regrets and like oh man like i would not want to go through that again and i feel like i'm in a much better place of course you are can you listen to that album though can you can you reflect on that album as
a body of work oh yeah i love it and especially love i love the sound of my voice uh it's very low in the mix i'd love to hear a remix of the vocal louder but there's just so much pain and and vulnerability in my voice i mean right from the get-go right from tired of sex which is like at that point in my life i'd never i'd only ever heard sex being put on a pedestal
right i get so much sex or i want to sex you up or sex is the whole point or i never heard somebody actually come out and say like i'm using it to destroy myself it's it's a tool to destroy to help me to dismantle my self-esteem yeah i've never heard that before there's got to be something more yeah i mean and and that moment when you're singing those notes across that
album is just you're right it's it's a very raw experience to listen to as a fan it's funny isn't it that we find these albums that sometimes cause the most pain when you make them become the most loved amongst us yeah and the i don't know if this is disillusioning at all but i think some of the pain you hear in my voice is actually physical
like i think at that time i was going through this procedure on my leg where i had all these pins and spikes and wires going through my muscle and bone and uh for for like a year and a half and this is constant pain and like i i went right in the middle of that i went and recorded the vocals for the album so it just i just sound like i've been
through a lot and i think some of that is is physical and you know maybe if you want to have a really great vocal performance you could consider some kind of self-torture device surgery yeah put a clamp on your leg i mean they joke about that back in the day that was always the joke about the bee gees right where it's just like well you're gonna
have to put on some tight trousers if you want to sing those notes do you know what i mean but you're actually you're actually qualifying the fact that physical pain can resonate through an emotional performance which is incredible really because i i never knew that yeah i don't know if i'd i'd to put myself through that again willingly but yeah i'm glad it's on the record you