Make Believe (Jewl) [Enhanced]

Weezer | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 10, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Label: Geffen Records
• ASIN: B000850JP8
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (338 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,735 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #63 in Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > Punk-Pop

Track Listings

1. Beverly Hills

2. Perfect Situation

3. This Is Such a Pity

4. Hold Me

5. Peace

6. We Are All on Drugs

7. The Damage in Your Heart

8. Pardon Me

9. My Best Friend

10. The Other Way

11. Freak Me Out

12. Haunt You Every Day

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Taking three-years between albums has made Weezer grow slower and more sober. But on its fifth disc the Los Angeles quartet is no more secure about its place in the world than it was a decade ago in longing tunes like "The World Has Turned And Left Me Here." Singer Rivers Cuomo, still struggling with adolescence at 34, is all apologies. "All I have to do is swing and I'm the hero/ But I'm a zero," he sings on "Perfect Situation," and "I am terrified of all things/ Frightened of the dark," on the lighters-aloft power ballad "Hold Me." The band, meanwhile, keeps things from getting too heavy by punctuating the songs with a familiar rush of bouncy new-wave melodies and fizzing power-pop riffs resulting in the hair-flinging metal of the future D.A.R.E. theme song and album high-point, "We Are All On Drugs." --Aidin Vaziri

Product Description

WEEZER Make Believe (2005 US 12-track CD album produced by rock legend Rick Rubin and includes the singles Beverly Hills and We Are All On Drugs picture sleeve which has been fully AUTOGRAPHED by Rivers Cuomo Brian Bell Scott Shriner and Patrick Wilson across the front in silver marker pen)
** Complete With Certificate Of Authenticity **

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a weezer we can be content with, May 15, 2005

By 

Tea (usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Make Believe (Jewl) (Audio CD)

For a bit of a background about the meaning of this album:

I first met weezer sometime after pinkerton came out, during a time when weezer was thought to be no more. Their first two albums quickly became my favorite (and still are). To clarify, i am a pinkerton-weezer fan.
so, naturally, i was overjoyed when i heard weezer had suddenly come back to give us the green album. I bought it and was disappointed in less than 30 minutes. (that's it? were's the rest?). yeah, there were a few catchy tunes, but it wasn't the weezer we all knew and loved. Then maladroit came out, and i thought, finally! we'll get the real weezer back! but sadly no, it wasn't.

For those who are not aware, the green album brought about a segregation between weezer fans. Some fans (the "green" fans) love the pop-tunes of the green album, maybe they liked a few songs from the blue album once they found them later, but they all agreed that pinkerton somehow sucked. Then there was the "blue" fans who loved the old weezer and thought pinkerton was the greatest album ever. Even though most were happy that weezer was back, they were disappointed that weezer wan't weezer and had become nothing more than shallow pop music.

As for album #5, i think this album has the power to unite the fans so that we can all listen to a single weezer CD together. it's all 4 CDs roled into one. Actually, I think this album is a bit of an apology to pinkerton fans, who he knows were disappointed with the last two albums (or maybe i'm just happy thinking that it is). Tracks like "Pardon Me" and "The Other Way" are what give me that feeling.

This is the weezer hopefully everyone can be content with. Don't buy it and expect pinkerton. it isn't pinkerton, that was the past, it seems Cuomo somehow got hurt from it and we'll probably never get that side of him again. However this is not the lazy, shallow crap of the last two albums either. Weezer is moving forward, it's changing, and it's changing for the better.

For an actual review of the CD (for the CD in itself):

The musical quality varys from simple 3-chord songs to sweet guitar rifs. The song's lyrics alternate from fun, finger-snapping, meaningless crap, to the nice depressing emo-ish sap we all crave. From happy moods to depressing tunes, private songs to party-worthy tracks, overall, it leaves you satisfied. Not completely happy and not worthy of 5 stars, but it's good enough to listen to and give you a good feeling.

Some of the songs -notably "Beverly Hills" and "This is such a pity" -are simple catchy songs which will most likely get some air-time. The lyrics are a bit cleche and nothing that we haven't heard before, but they're tollerable and good to listen to while driving with your friends. However, some of the songs -such as "Freak Me Out", "Hold Me", and "Peace" -are the kind that become your own. You keep them to yourself, listening to them alone with your bedroom door locked. But to prevent the album from feeling melancholy, the two types of songs alternate nearly every track.

Overall, perhaps it could have been better (simply by deleting a few of the stupid ones), but it's pretty darn good as it is. Buy it if you're a long time fan, buy it if this is the first cd you've ever heard of weezer. You're bound to like the majority of it. As a fun bonus, the CD booklet (yes, we actually get one this time!) has some nice artwork, i think it's very fitting.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Such a sad attempt, June 28, 2005

By 

R. Hutson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Make Believe (Jewl) (Audio CD)

As I awaited the release of this, Weezer's 5th studio album, I could hardly contain myself. I am such a huge fan of Weezer's first 2 albums and I enjoyed much of Maladroit and the green album, though I do admit I was disappointed a bit in the last two. Not that either albums were terrible, they just weren't up to the standards that were set by the first two albums. The blue album was a classic 90s album for so many reasons and I felt that Pinkerton was fantastic for its introspective and brooding qualities expressed throughout this sophomore release.
But as I stripped off the cellophane and popped the disc into my player knowing, just knowing I was gonning to be blown away, I was instead shocked and horrified. Not only was this not a good disc, it was a terrible attempt to reclaim the power of their first two albums.
Rivers Cuomo is now a man in his mid-thirties, but his lyrical content still sounds like he's a 20 year old kid down on his luck with his teenage girlfriend. I played this disc thru twice, back to back, just to make sure I hadn't been mistaken.
Sadly enough, each track was so dull and unimaginative that the second play didn't add any credibility to this musical mud.
Each song's guitar and bass line's are simple 3 or 4 cord progressions that sound like they were written by garage band when I was 15. I'm sure there were some nuances that I missed in the playing, but when the core of the music is so lacking I usually don't stick around to search for something worthy in the tracks. The drumming is solid but nothing special. And the solos, usually a Weezer strong point, were lame and bland as everything else on your typical top 40 programming.
I guess this disc would be fun for a teenager who hasn't followed Weezer from their high points until now, but for anybody who likes any of Weezer's previos material, steer clear.
I really wish I could have a single redeeming thing to say about a single track on this disc. Then I could at least keep it near the end of my CD wallet for the every so infrequent listen. But this crappy disc doesn't even get that lucky. It got sold back to my local Hasting's as quick as I could mash eject and get this stink out of my player. Do yourself a favor and don't even pick up the used copy at a discount price; you still would have spent far to much for such bland music.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars False Emotions, July 19, 2006

By 

Rusty Camino "zeppelin27" (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Make Believe (Jewl) (Audio CD)

If you haven't read or heard the classic parable "The Emperor's New Clothes," look it up and learn about it. It is an integral cliché to apply to situations exactly like the warm critical reception of Weezer's latest album "Make Believe." Rolling Stone, an almost entirely solid source of valid and reliable opinion, gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, registering the album as "excellent", a step below a bona fide classic. In fact, the only ones that I know of who got it right were Pitchfork, an otherwise despairingly, endlessly pretentious group of snot-nosed indiest-of-the-indie worshippers who only praise the most bloated, self-conscious computer blips they consider good music. They gave it less than 1 out of 10, I think. Or a little bit over 1. The point is: they got it right for once.

Fans all over seem to share the anti-Pitchfork mindset, and have sided with Rolling Stone's obsequious, lazy acceptance of Weezer's newly developed art form. Some say it's their best. What I do know is that critics and fans are playing emperor's new clothes. Why they are, I really can't say for sure. I did, when I first got the album, because I wanted so badly to not be disappointed by my favorite band's new effort; to perhaps counter the philosophy that Weezer were slowly spiraling down the sinkhole since their second album. I shrouded myself in denial, and for the first month or so, told myself I enjoyed the album with only a small beacon of cognizance meekly questioning why I was accepting this dreck that is "Make Believe."

Every vapid songwriting platitude is stretched to its breaking point on this album. Cuomo yearns to be a "hero" but wistfully admits he is, gasp, a "zero!" He wants to be "rollin' like a celebrity/living in Beverley Hills," but not really, because he's being sarcastic! Wow! Not since "Candide" have I seen such unabashed ironical wit. Every time Rivers lays down a lyric, you hope, pray, burst blood vessels begging the gods of art to not allow the couplet you're about to witness end with the most obvious rhyming counterpart you've ever heard. Then you forget to think there must be no gods of art, because you're too busy cringing at "sometimes I let you go/sometimes I hurt you so."

And don't get me started on the musical merits or the supposed soul drain that this album is supposed to be. To the first one, the album is so musically nondescript that it borders on offensive. There are no more slow-churning buildups and soul crushing crescendos a la "Only in Dreams," or dynamic bursts of aggression like in "Why Bother?" It is more processed and blah than a blink-182 B-side. And as for Rivers' heart-to-heart with his listeners and his loved ones through the lyrics... if you truly listened you would see it's more contrived than a twist ending in a "Saw" movie. He's just trying to emulate the success of Pinkerton, which was truly introspective. This is shallower than Oasis, and mounds less catchy.

Perhaps, now with Weezer's merciful disbandment, fans together can be freed from the shackles limiting our views and turning us into unquestioning zombies--that is, now that we have nothing to expect from Weezer, we don't need to keep forcing ourselves to make believe they haven't lost it (get it?), and hadn't lost it long ago. The Emperor's not wearing clothes, fellas. Open your eyes.