Pinkerton is the second studio album by the American rock band Weezer, released on September 24, 1996, by DGC Records. The guitarist and vocalist Rivers Cuomo wrote most of Pinkerton while studying at Harvard University, after abandoning plans for a rock opera, Songs from the Black Hole. It was the last Weezer album to feature the bassist Matt Sharp, who left in 1998.

To better capture their live sound, Weezer self-produced Pinkerton, creating a darker, more abrasive album than their self-titled 1994 debut. Cuomo's lyrics express loneliness and disillusionment with the rock lifestyle. The title comes from the character BF Pinkerton from Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, whom Cuomo described as an "asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star". Like Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton views Japanese culture from the perspective of an outsider who considers Japan fragile and sensual.

Pinkerton produced the singles "El Scorcho" and "The Good Life". It debuted at number 19 on the US Billboard 200, failing to meet sales expectations. It received mixed reviews; Rolling Stone readers voted it the third-worst album of 1996. For subsequent albums, Cuomo returned to more traditional pop songwriting and less personal lyrics.

In subsequent years, Pinkerton was reassessed and achieved acclaim. Several publications named it one of the best albums of the 1990s, and it was certified platinum in the US in 2016. Several emo bands have credited it as an influence.

Background

alt=|thumb|upright|Frontman [[Rivers Cuomo (pictured in 1997) cited his struggles with musical success as an inspiration for the writing of Pinkerton.]]

In 1994, after the multi-platinum success of Weezer's self-titled debut album (also known as the Blue Album), Weezer took a break from touring for Christmas. The singer and songwriter, Rivers Cuomo, felt limited by rock music. Every night, after performing with Weezer, he listened to Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera Madama Butterfly; the "depth of emotion and sadness and tragedy" inspired him to go further with his music.

In his home state of Connecticut, Cuomo began preparing material for Weezer's next album using an 8-track recorder. His original concept was a rock opera, Songs from the Black Hole, that would express his mixed feelings about success. Weezer's second album would instead feature songs written while Cuomo was at Harvard, chronicling his loneliness and frustration, or what Cuomo referred to as his "dark side".

The lyrics feature self-deprecating humor. Erlewine described it as a "singer-songwriter record representing Rivers Cuomo's bid for respectability". Calling him an "asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star", Cuomo felt the character was "the perfect symbol for the part of myself that I am trying to come to terms with on this album". Other titles considered included Playboy and Diving into the Wreck (after the poem by Adrienne Rich).

Like Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton views Japanese culture from the perspective of an outsider who considers Japan fragile and sensual; the Japanese allusions are infused with the narrator's romantic disappointments and sexual frustration. Cuomo wrote that Pinkerton "is really the clash of East vs West. My hindu, zen, kyokushin [karate], self-denial, self-abnegation, no-emotion, cool-faced side versus my Italian-American heavy metal side." The songs are mostly sequenced in the order in which he wrote them, and so "the album kind of tells the story of my struggle with my inner Pinkerton".

Artwork

thumb| by [[Hiroshige, from which the Pinkerton cover is derived|alt= A village in a mountainous landscape. A man with a conical hat, a cane, and a saddled horse can be seen in the foreground. Japanese characters are seen in the bottom left and top central parts of the image.]]

The cover artwork is derived from ("Night snow at Kambara") from the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige's 1830s series 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō. Lyrics from Madama Butterfly are printed on the Pinkerton CD in their original Italian: "Everywhere in the world, the roving Yankee takes his pleasure and his profit, indifferent to all risks. He drops anchor at random..."

Behind the CD tray is a map with the title (Italian for "Island of the Butterfly and Peninsula of Dog").

Release and promotion

Todd Sullivan, an A&R representative from Weezer's record label, Geffen, described Pinkerton as a "very brave record", but worried: "What sort of light does this put the band in? It could have been interpreted as them being a disposable pop band." Geffen was pleased with the record and felt that fans would not be disappointed.

Weezer turned down a video treatment for the lead single, "El Scorcho", proposed by Spike Jonze, who had helped raise Weezer's status with his videos for "Undone – The Sweater Song" and "Buddy Holly". Cuomo said: "I really want the songs to come across untainted this time around… I really want to communicate my feelings directly and because I was so careful in writing that way. I'd hate for the video to kinda misrepresent the song, or exaggerate certain aspects." The "El Scorcho" video features Weezer playing in an assembly hall in Los Angeles, surrounded by light fixtures flashing in time to the music. The director, Mark Romanek, quit after arguments with Cuomo, leaving Cuomo to edit the video himself. The video debuted on MTV's 120 Minutes and received moderate airplay.

Pinkerton debuted at number 19 on the US Billboard 200 chart, its highest position. It sold 47,000 copies its first week, falling far short of the sales of Weezer's first album. "El Scorcho" reached number 19, and "The Good Life" reached number 32. Mykel and Carli ran Weezer's fan club and helped manage publicity for several other Los Angeles bands, and had inspired the Weezer song "Mykel and Carli". Weezer canceled a show to attend their funeral. In August, Weezer and other bands held a benefit concert for their family in Los Angeles.

Pinkerton's Inc. lawsuit

A day before Pinkerton was to be released on September 24, 1996, a restraining order was obtained by Californian security firm Pinkerton's Inc. Pinkerton sued Weezer and Geffen for federal trademark infringement, claiming they were trying to capitalize on their reputation. Under the terms of the restraining order, which had Pinkerton's Inc. seeking two million dollars in damages, Weezer would be kept from "selling, distributing, or advertising" an album under the name Pinkerton. The Geffen spokesman Dennis Dennehy defended the title, arguing that it was a reference to Madama Butterfly and not aimed at "any sort of corporate entity". Cuomo wrote a six-page paper explaining why he chose the title and why he felt it was essential. The case was thrown out of court after the judge determined that "the hardship of not issuing the Pinkerton disc would be greater for Geffen than any hardship Pinkerton's Inc or its shareholders might incur from consumers who mistakenly presume the company has anything to do with the album".

Critical reception

Initial reviews of Pinkerton were mixed. Jeff Gordinier of Entertainment Weekly deemed it "a collection of get-down party anthems for agoraphobics" and criticized Weezer's choice to self-produce, which he felt resulted in a "sloppy and raw" aesthetic inferior to the pop sound of their debut. Melody Maker Jennifer Nine praised the music, but advised listeners "to ignore the lyrics entirely".

Steve Appleford of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the songs were "sloppy and awkward, but express a seemingly genuine, desperate search for sex and love".

| subtitle = Retrospective reviews

| rev1 = AllMusic

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| rev3 = Consequence of Sound

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| rev4 = Entertainment Weekly

| rev4score = A

| rev5 = Kerrang!

| rev5score = 5/5

| rev6 = Pitchfork

| rev6score = 10/10

| rev7 = PopMatters

| rev7score = 10/10

| rev8 = Record Collector

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| rev9 = Rolling Stone

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| rev10 = The Rolling Stone Album Guide

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Cuomo was embarrassed by Pinkerton reception and the personal nature of its songs. According to the Guardian, "For a long time, Cuomo talked about Pinkerton like it was his high school diary, a humiliating reminder of a time when he was unapologetically emotional and corny." In August 1997, Cuomo wrote in his diaries: "This has been a tough year. It's not just that the world has said Pinkerton isn't worth a shit, but that the Blue album wasn't either. It was a fluke ... I'm a shitty songwriter."

After the Pinkerton tour, Sharp left the band, and Weezer went on a hiatus. A wave of mainstream emo bands including Jimmy Eat World, Saves the Day, Dashboard Confessional and Motion City Soundtrack began citing it as an influence.

Cuomo told Rolling Stone in 2001: "The most painful thing in my life these days is the cult around Pinkerton. It's just a sick album, sick in a diseased sort of way."

For Weezer's subsequent albums, Cuomo moved to simpler songwriting with less personal lyrics. Rolling Stone described Weezer's followup, the Green Album (2001), as the "anti-Pinkerton", with "squeaky-clean" production and album art that recalled Weezer's debut. In 2002, Rolling Stone readers voted it the 16th-greatest album of all time. In 2003, Pitchfork gave Pinkerton a perfect score and named it the 53rd-greatest album of the 1990s. and Drowned in Sound. By August 2009, Pinkerton had sold 852,000 copies in the US and was certified gold. In 2016, almost 20 years after its release, Pinkerton was certified platinum for sales of over one million copies in the US. That year, Alana Levinson of the Guardian wrote that Pinkerton "conversational, confessional" lyrics were appropriate in the age of social media.

By 2008, Cuomo had reconsidered the album, saying: "Pinkerton great. It's super-deep, brave, and authentic. Listening to it, I can tell that I was really going for it when I wrote and recorded a lot of those songs." In 2010, Bell told The Aquarian Weekly: "Pinkerton has definitely taken on a life of its own and became more successful and more accepted … As an artist, you just have to do what you believe in at the time, whether it's accepted or not. You just have to keep going with it." That year, Weezer embarked on the Memories Tour, playing Blue and Pinkerton in their entirety. Cuomo said it was "validating" to see audiences sing along to Pinkerton songs after the rejection he felt performing them in the past.

| 2003

| 53

|-

! scope="row"| Guitar World

| Top 100 Guitar Albums of All-Time

| 2005

| 76

|-

! scope="row"| Rolling Stone

| 100 Greatest Albums of the '90s

| 2010

| 48

|-

! scope="row"| Alternative Press

| 20 Albums From 1996 That Mark Some of the Best of the Decade

| 2021

| N/A

|-

! scope="row"| NME

|United Kingdom

|The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

|2013

|108

|}

Further releases

On November 2, 2010, DGC reissued Pinkerton with live performances, B-sides, and previously unreleased songs. The reissue debuted at number six on the Billboard Catalog Albums chart and achieved a perfect score on the aggregate review website Metacritic.

In 2011, Cuomo published a book, The Pinkerton Diaries, which collects his writings from the era, including lyrics, studio notes, journals, emails, letters, and essays. It was sold with the compilation album Alone III: The Pinkerton Years, compiling demos recorded between 1993 and 1996, when Cuomo was writing material for Pinkerton and Songs from the Black Hole.

Track listing

Personnel

Adapted from the liner notes.

Weezer

  • Brian Bell – guitar, vocals
  • Rivers Cuomo – vocals, guitar, keyboards, glockenspiel, clarinet
  • Matt Sharp – bass, vocals
  • Patrick Wilson – drums

Additional musicians

  • Karl Koch – percussion on "Butterfly"

Technical personnel

  • Weezer – production
  • Jack Joseph Puig – mixing, engineer
  • Joe Barresi – engineer
  • Dave Fridmann – engineer
  • Adam Kasper – engineer
  • Clif Norrell – engineer
  • Rob Jacobs – engineer
  • Jim Rondinelli – engineer
  • Billy Bowers – second engineer
  • Greg Fidelman – second engineer
  • Dan McLaughlin – second engineer
  • Jim Champagne – second engineer
  • David Dominguez – second engineer
  • George Marino – mastering
  • Spike Jonze – photography
  • Karl Koch – webmaster
  • Janet Wolsborn – art assistant
  • Hiroshige – cover art ("Kambara: Night Snow")

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"

|+Weekly chart performance for Pinkerton

! Chart (1996)

!style="width:5em; line-height:1.3"| Peak position

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Year-end charts

{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|+2002 year-end chart performance for Pinkerton

!scope="col"|Chart (2002)

!scope="col"|Position

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!scope="row"|Canadian Alternative Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)

|align=center|137

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Certifications

Notes

References

Works cited

<!-- This is a licensed stream for the album, which is allowed under Wikipedia polices -->

  • Pinkerton at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)