Is there such a thing as trying too hard?
Weezer may be crossing the line from clever to desperate with its video for the new song “Pork and Beans.”
 

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The song is part of the band’s upcoming self-titled album, nicknamed the “red album,” set to be released June 3.

The thing that’s so frustrating about the video is that it is very carefully catered to the YouTube generation, featuring guest appearances from a slew of YouTube “celebrities” who’ve spawned viral video hits of their own.

“Evolution of Dance” video guy? Yeah.

Mentos fountain? Sure.

Star Wars parody? You bet.

Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker? Unfortunately, yes.

“Chocolate Rain” singer? Yup.

All of your viral video favorites are here!
The only thing missing is some sort of rip-off of an Ok Go video.

However, the difference between those videos and this one is that those videos became popular by accident because they were so random and weird and oddly captivating. Weezer’s video on the other hand seems to be a desperate round of coattail riding.

The meeting with the video producer probably sounded something like this:

So, we need to make a music video. Hey what do kids like these days?
I dunno, YouTube?
Cool, let’s take all the popular videos from YouTube, and put them in our music video, that way everyone will already like it.
Genius!

Of course, with a band of smarty-pants dorks like Weezer, they’ll probably explain that the video isn’t lame—it’s supposed to be lame. It’s like postmodernism and irony or some junk.

Whatever. Is it clever or stupid? It’s too soon to tell. But it is catchy.

Hating aside, the new song is an improvement over the pop-emo schlock the band served up with 2005’s Make Believe (admit it, “Beverly Hills” is an awful song—especially coming from a group capable of writing much more clever and catchy tunes such as “Buddy Holly” and “Hash Pipe.”).

What do you think?
Is the new Weezer video clever or stupid?
Leave a comment and tell us what you think.
See the video, here.

Get lots of cool Weezer mp3s and downloads, here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Free Music, Rock Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.