1y ago

Weezer straight up writing ads for audible.com

125 comments

"Weezer is a shitty corporate sell-out band" hasn't been breaking news in like three decades. Their music video for Buddy Holly came on the Windows 95 installation disc for God's sake
- It was the only video you could watch without buffering for days with the shitty dial up internet of the time. OH OH AND YOU'RE MARY TYLER MOORE. Fucking kill me.
  
  I was amazed that the Windows 95 stock Media Player could minimize video to a 32x32 icon at full speed! I played it on loop for hours.
- That's pretty sick actually
- Hey talking of disks does anyone have the full version of the innernette it’s gone from YouTube
  
  https://youtu.be/hqi2Jy0UMiA?si=z1N4Yhg4HSONSfVf
  With extra win95 ui nostalgia
  
  Or did you mean the tim and Eric skit?
  This is the longest clip I could find https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=567713083394530
- That's honestly the only reason why I know that they exist. I remember thinking that it was a weird name for a band since people who wheeze can't talk well, let alone sing.
- Oh fuck I wondered why that was on my pc

Audio books are free with Libby. Fuck audible. Support libraries.
- Worse is Audible is about to put ads in their books. Which is bullshit if I pay for a book no way should they be allowed to add ads into my books.
  
  Worse is Audible is about to put ads in their books.
  At least they aren't putting Weezer songs in their books.
  
  There are other ways to get your audiobooks ad-free.
  Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, there should be more discussion about ways to get ebooks and audiobooks outside of the major paid platforms like Audible. I was gonna make a wink-wink-nudge-nudge reference to pirating here, which is viable, but then I realized I couldn't name 5 legitimate audiobook providers off the top of my head, and I consume a lot of books!
  So besides Audible and Libby, can anyone tell me about good, legitimate sources for audiobooks?
  
  Are they actually? I’m so glad I cancelled my subscription.
- fuck amazon in general tbh
- My wife listens to audiobooks constantly. She uses Libby and hasn't paid for one in years. Highly recommended.

We are Weezer and we are here to make money and sell out and stuff!
- They're indestructible because they are vegan too
  
  Hopefully they remember that chicken parmesan isn't vegan.
  
  I love that part of the movie because at the time it premiered I had an acquaintance from university who was vegan. Dude would pass out cold if he stood up too fast. Doctor said that as it turns out, he was doing vegan wrong and he needed to eat meat ASAP to fix the damage to his metabolism. Then, afterwards, if he still wanted to be vegan he would have to supplement way more protein than he was doing before. The contrasting absurdity always cracked me up when they tried to make it as if being vegan gives them superpowers.
- The ads are really affecting me. I'm reaching my threshold.
- I'm so ashamed to be a Gen Xer'.

I dgaf what that cunt says.
Pinkerton was their peak. It was all downhill from there.
- It's like they regressed on Green, but to a radio friendly banger version of Weezer that was pretty good. Then everything after that was just watery goat diarrhea.
  
  is this something people care about?
  
  White album is good.
  
  Username checks out.
  
  Greatest of all time diarrhea?
- Pinkerton is good but it's pretty much just "Weezer does the Pixies." Listening to Doolittle and Bossanova ruined so many 90s albums for me
  
  Pinkerton is good but it’s pretty much just “Weezer does the Pixies.” Listening to Doolittle and Bossanova ruined so many 90s albums for me
  Bruh I have like, at least two albums in my collection that are quite literally just "Such and such does the pixies".
- Yeah Pinkerton was great, the rest is fine
  
  I don't even like Pinkerton now, Rivers' sex fantasies kinda gross me out

I would be upset if I paid for an ad. I would probably stop being a fan.
- I would buy drinks just to throw at them. Like a lot of drinks.
  
  That’s just playing right into their hands.
  Collect empties and fill them up in the toilets. Recycling!
  
  Nah you gotta bring cold bottles of piss with you to the gig. That's how they know you don't respect them.

FYI this is the song
¯(ツ)/¯
Also doesn't seem like it was paid placement
- IMO there is no way a musician name drops a product without collecting a bag. The interview with Amazon would also have cost them money to make happen.
  Weezer would need to be astonishingly naive to write the song before the agreement was reached with Amazon. Also other comments in this thread detail their past record of selling out.
  I listen to quite a lot of hip-hop and there were a couple of years about a decade ago where almost every artist had a lyric about uber.
- Yeah I was thinking it was Grapes of Wrath. It makes sense, the song's whole point was River's pandemic-era hobbies, and Audible blew up in the pandemic. I feel this rant is just the author projecting their anti-Amazon mindset onto a band they dislike. Sure, Amazon is terrible, but I doubt they would pay Weezer of all bands to promote Audible. Maybe its just my youthful optimism and love of Weezer clouding my rationality, but I feel like this is just another "old man yells at cloud".
- Oh, good. So it's not paid stupidity, it's genuine stupidity.
  
  It’s interesting. There are many songs from over the years about products the song writer likes.
  I’m thinking about beers, and cars, and instruments, and various other things. Including games and movies and books.
  It’s funny that once it’s a website, that crosses the line.
- Also doesn’t seem like it was paid placement
  I'm not so sure on that. At the very least they paid him for the interview there, and really I think they probably just made out that they didn't find out beforehand.
  It's pretty ridiculous to think that a band that's been in the business as long as Weezer has, signed to a major label like Atlantic Records, wouldn't ask for permission to use someone else's brand in one of their songs.

If you're in US, you can borrow audiobooks from public libraries for free usually through an app. Its very convenient.
- And if you're a pirate, or if you happen to have a lot of Audiobook CDs, or if you have a bunch of books on audible and want to free them, AudiobookShelf is an amazing self hosted solution for Audiobook libraries
- Libby! They also loan out ebooks (which is usually what I use it for). Total game-changer.
  Also, as a tip: Check out what libraries you're eligible to join. I'm in New York State, and despite not living in NYC, I am totally eligible for cards at the New York Public Library, Queens Public Library, and Brooklyn Public Library. Between those, and all the libraries in my county pooling their resources, I rarely have to wait long for a book unless it's brand new.
  
  That's a great idea, I'm on a 16-week wait list for hitchhiker's guide right now

The people on the Windows 95 CD are sell-outs?!

Does this sound made up you? Hard to swallow your favorite band could be so scummy?
Did you know Weezer made an NFT? Yeah, that's who they are now folks.
https://www.coinspeaker.com/weezer-ok-crypto-nft-album-wax/

This sounds like a scene from Idiocracy
- "Hey, everybody! Thanks for coming out tonight to our concert presented by Amazon dot com's Audible dot com. Audible - it's got what brains crave."
  
  "and don't forget to subscribe and likeeeehhhhhh donate to us when you exit"
- Welcome to our concert, I love you.

Ever read Transmetropolitan? This sounds like something directly out of that. People going to concerts to hear their favorite bands sing advertisements to them.

It feels so bizarre that they would do this, they always seemed so cool to me.
- That's the power of advertising, alot of bands seem a type of way. That's the type of way that let's you buy their merchandise and it is manufactured.
- They've been up their own ass for a long while.
- Yeah, it's not like they're poor and need the money. Rivers is an odd guy. It wouldn't surprise me if he considered it some sort of art piece.

Grapes of Wrath is a great song, it's not some "audible ad". It's weird that one of their best songs in years is being characterized like that.
- Right?! And the album’s several years old now. The song is one of many written in the midst of the pandemic about the peculiar escapes from life we find.

With how shitty Weezer is nowadays, that Audible.com song might be their best work in years
- Yeah...nowadays...

As a counter point to this guy saying "Get back to the place you were in when you loved music".
Most artists are fucking miserable when they're producing their greatest works, Rivers Cuomo is no exception.
- Having all of their needs fulfilled a hundred times over alters their sense of normalcy and causes them to be less relatable. It’s inevitable.
  
  That too, but the thing about great art, it tends to come from a place of pain and misery. Artists who tap into that, are rarely happy.
  But if they last long enough, and don't join the 27 club, they tend to either get help, or at least find some way to achieve a modicum of peace. There are a couple notable exceptions, who found no peace, and who either didn't get help or didn't get enough help...

Celebrities shamelessly selling out and publicly writing blatant repetitive advertisement? How could they do such a thing?
Anyways, that movie, now also available on streaming services!

Somebody needs to invent an IRL adblocker.
- It's called booing.

What stage of capitalism is this?
I'm finding it more and more difficult to keep track these days.
- It's the acceptance stage.

This person just wrote copy for audible.

You could tell they'd sold out to Audible when "Grapes of Wrath" came out.
- Oh my God, it never occurred to me that money exchanged hands for that song. I just thought it was a cute little pop culture reference. How do we know it's not though? In any case, I bet this is the song OP is referring to.

I was at the concerts in the 90s and early 2000s, Metallica, Slayer, Motörhead, Amorphis, Nofx, Bad Religion etc, I don't go to concerts anymore for about 10 years. They don't make them as they used to anymore. What shows they were - wow. Even the smaller ones were epic as fuck, like Blind Guardian. No, they don't do it anymore. This post prices my point once again. ( TIL I'm finally in the "back in my days" age)
- They absolutely make them like they used to and even better, you're just old and your judgement is clouded, and you wish to return to your youth.
  
  Homeboy went to Taylor Swift and was upset it wasn't like it used to be
- I've been to quite a few concerts in the last few years and some bands are much better at doing concerts than others. For example I will always show up if Black Stone Cherry has a show anywhere near me because they're significantly better in concert than their studio albums, meanwhile Black Veil Brides was the worst performance at their own concert with their opening bands providing far more enjoyable and engaging shows than them.
  Most recently i attended The Offspring, Sum41 and Simple Plan and holy crap was that a good bucket list concert. Sum41 encouraged a lot of action in the pit as well as lots of audience engagement while The Offspring had a ton of fun audience interactions and silly banter between (and in one case in the middle of) songs.
- I can only imagine Blind Gaurdian live!
  
  Blind Guardian still performs live and there's still many great shows with great artists in many different genres.
- Just have to hit up the right bands. Superorganism for instance puts on a fucking great show, though you wouldn't think it listening to their songs. There were at least 3 mosh pits at that concert lol.

That’s when you start spitting on that band.

I went to a comic gig earlier this year and they did an advert for sky, I was livid and proceeded to not engage anymore and tell everyone they're a shill

This is why more cool and talented people should be in the public eye. Weezer legit felt, when I was 16, to be the best representation of my aesthetics and values. Writers I liked referenced them. Their music was in ads for stuff I liked. And so my teenage personality was heavily influenced by these shitty people who made good music before I was born (and pretty shit music after I was born).
And that vulnerability and honesty and that highly creative style is what drew me in, in the first place.
- it always seemed kinda cheesy and phoned-in to me. Like they just came up with easy melodies and wrapped them in the most accessible format. Like a Nickelback for a different crowd.

"I love Audible, Get blind drunk and unintelligible, Or get so high its unmanageable, But I get it good with Audible!
The books read aloud are music to my ears, The money spent is the negatives everyone hears, But those amazing voices are like a great case of your favourite beers, Inside my devices are Audible!
Audible Dot Com! The place to be, Audible Dot Com! The amazing titles you'll see! Audible Dot Com! Its all you need, When you're drinking beers or smoking weed!
Audible Dot Com!"
Weezer, a once decent band turned advertising group.

How would this even work? Would the crowd not be booing the ad-song? I can’t imagine a sponsor would want that.

My friend went to a Weezer concert recently, he said there weren't any ads pushed.

Whatever. Rivers and co haven't written a great song since the Blue Album anyway.
- I dunno man, Pinkerton had some pretty good songs. But after that yeah it was pretty much downhill.
  
  I do remember enjoying one or two songs on Pinkerton, but I can't remember any names. There certainly wasn't anything as iconic as The Sweater Song, Say It Ain't So, or Buddy Holly.
- I must be one of the few who really enjoyed the green album. But hell, even that was over 20 years ago

Weezer? More like, Weiner.

Then stop listening.....
- HOLY SHIT DUH
  You’re an insufferable person.
  
  And you sound like a douche

125 comments