2008. What a year. Things that happened in it off the top of my head… The Beijing Olympics. Barack Obama was elected president. The financial crisis. The Dark Knight. I don’t what it says about me that those are the moments that stand out. It’s all a preamble to the fact that Weezer’s third self-titled album, commonly referred to as the Red Album, was released that year too. The record hasn’t gone down as one of the most important in the band’s catalogue. I mainly remember that Weezer era because Rivers Cuomo had a moustache. At the time, I feel like the overriding opinion was that the album was just okay, but anything they did was always going to be better than Make Believe. I followed how the band was doing via the releases of the album’s singles. ‘Pork and Beans’ was the comeback song, was very excited when that was around. And then ‘Troublemaker’ came along, but only digitally, and didn’t have a music video for three months. It was getting to 2009 when I was hearing the song regularly.

‘Troublemaker’ starts off the Red Album, a track of nerdy bravado – probably ironic, but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s completely sincere – that only Rivers Cuomo could somehow pull off. You read the words, they give off a “14-year-old-self-nominated-bad-kid-on-the-block” energy. Very funny coming from Cuomo, who would have been 37 at the time of the song’s recording and had written songs like ‘Island in the Sun’ and ‘Buddy Holly’. Him singing ‘Troublemaker’ shouldn’t work. But it just does. It’s so simple, so catchy. Mainly made up of two chords and a two note melody, it’s very easy for the entire song to get stuck in your heard on the first listen, even if you’re not trying to absorb anything. It was originally going to be the album’s first single. Would have been a reasonable selection. ‘Pork and Beans’ was chosen instead. A solid, solid choice. I think of it now, they did the two-note melody / chord trick in ‘Back to the Shack’, but the chorus alternated between two notes instead. ‘Troublemaker’ does it better. ‘Least I think so.

Don’t really know what else there is to say in regards to the song. Guess I can just provide some thoughts and opinions. Weezer aren’t too bad when it comes to album openers. Up to the Red Album, tracks under that category included classics like ‘My Name is Jonas’, ‘Tired of Sex’, and – a classic in my eyes – ‘American Gigolo’. Say what you want about ‘Beverly Hills’, but I couldn’t see it anywhere else on Make Believe. ‘Troublemaker’ was now part of the gang. Yes, the way Cuomo sings “Marrying a beyootch / Having seven kiooods” is very funny. Bending those words like that so they rhyme with ‘god’ in the next line should be illegal. But it’s Rivers Cuomo. That’s all I have on that. And the “How’s this for arts and crafts? / Wununununnunun” part… I like that quite a bit. Because of the middling reception the Red Album got and the lack of talk it gets today, I’ve never listened to the whole thing from start to finish. I just assume it may be a case where the singles – shout out to ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’ – were the best it had to offer, and everything else was so-so. But any Redheads out there, tell me wrong. I’m always down for a new experience.